Many cancers arise as a result of damage to DNA that persists and changes the functioning of the cell. Some cancers are associated with a deficiency in the ability of the cell to find and repair such damage. Dr. Jacqueline Barton’s research seeks to understand fundamentally how this damage arises, how regions of the genome may be protected from such damage, and how such damage is found and repaired.
Dr. Barton’s explored biological roles for oxidative damage to DNA in the context of DNA damage and repair. In one important study, she explored how oxidative stress affects the ability of tumor suppressor protein, p53, to bind to different DNA segments that it controls to turn on or off other genes. The protein p53, is considered the “guardian” of the cell and mutations in p53 are well known to be associated with cancer. These results point to a role for DNA-oxidative stress mediated charge transport as a first signal for oxidative stress directing p53 to different promoters depending upon cellular stresses.
Her lab has increased our understanding of how DNA damage may activate a wide range of signals within the cell and how that damage is detected and repaired. Remarkably, her results demonstrated that it appears that DNA-mediated charge transport, can be the first step in activating either cell death or DNA repair. Her data allow a much clearer understanding of the first molecular steps in cancerous transformation and likely also provide a path to early cancer diagnosis.
