A
team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of
Texas at Austin has applied an unconventional approach that used bacteria to
discover human proteins that can lead to DNA damage and promote cancer.
Reported in the journal Cell, the study also proposes biological mechanisms by
which these proteins can cause damage to DNA, opening possibilities for future
cancer treatments.
To
uncover these DNA "damage-up" proteins, the researchers
took an unconventional approach. They searched for proteins that promote DNA
damage in human cells by looking at proteins that, when overproduced, would
cause DNA damage in the bacterium E. coli.
The
researchers genetically modified bacteria so they would fluoresce red when DNA
was damaged. Then, they overexpressed each of the 4,000 genes present in E coli
individually and determined which ones made bacteria glow red.
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Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
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Pharmaceutical Microbiology