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Article: What is radiation's true target?(MOLECULAR BIOLOGY)(Technical report)
- Article from:
- Environmental Health Perspectives
- Article date:
- August 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Radiobiologists have long believed that ionizing radiation, like gamma rays, kills cells by shattering DNA. Now Michael Daly, an associate professor of pathology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, contends that proteins--not DNA--are the most sensitive targets, at least in some radiation-sensitive bacteria. Moreover, Daly's team discovered a novel manganese complex that appears to protect proteins from gamma rays. This new perspective comes from working with Deinococcus radiodurans, a bacterium nicknamed "Conan the Bacterium" because it survives huge radiation doses.
For 15 years, Daly probed DNA, genes, and chromosomal packaging for ...