Bolton, Bialonska, Song Published in Mutation Research

Philip Bolton, professor of chemistry; Dobroslawa Bialonska, postdoctoral fellow in in chemistry; and chemistry graduate student Kenneth Song are the co-authors of “Complexes of mismatched and complementary DNA with minor groove binders. Structures at nucleotide resolution via an improved hydroxyl radical cleavage methodology,” published in Mutation Research, 726(1): pages 47-53, 2011.

In this paper, the authors explain how they’ve developed a protocol to investigate the structures of the complexes of damaged DNA with drug like molecules. Tumor cell lines can replicate faster than normal cells and many also have defective DNA repair pathways. This has lead to the investigation of the inhibition of DNA repair proteins as a means of therapeutic intervention. An alternative approach is to hide or mask damaged DNA from the repair systems. The full abstract is online here.