From the dark laboratories of Giltner Hall, an MSU professor and a doctoral student have helped advance DNA research.
Microbiology and biochemistry Professor Robert Hausinger and doctoral student Timothy Henshaw discovered a new way to repair damaged DNA last spring.
Their findings were published in the Sept. 12 issue of the scientific journal Nature. Hausinger submitted the findings to the journal in March. Hausinger said the long-term results could potentially lead to repairing damaged cells to slow down or minimize problems such as aging and cancer. The team is now focusing on the role of the metal ions in the reaction.
Now the team shares a new lab with large windows overlooking the north side of campus from the sixth floor of the Biomedical and Physical Science Building. Hausinger said it was such a nice change to move to the new location, but said the research for the journal was performed in Giltner Hall. Hausinger said that being located in the new building is exciting because other science departments are located in close proximity.
“It is great to be in this facility, it’s a nice move from over in Giltner,” he said.
He said the team started on the project more than a year ago, after he read a published report suggesting the protein AlkB might be a member of a class of iron oxygenase enzymes that he has worked with.
Hausinger and Henshaw also had help from colleagues Sarah Trewick, Tomas Lindahl and Barbara Sedgwick from the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute in Hertfordshire, England.
“I was interested in how it works, and I said I think I do know how it works, and then we started working on it,” he said.
Many other scientists had studied AlkB, but they still didn’t know how it repaired damaged DNA.
The team discovered that it uses iron and oxygen to burn off the methyl group, a process called oxidation, to form formaldehyde.
The protein can prevent mutation of DNA, using oxygen to burn off methyl groups. A similar enzyme naturally occurs in humans and may act to minimize aging and cancer.
When the cells repair DNA they use oxygen, a method scientists had not researched, since researchers typically were using antioxidants to prevent DNA damage.“He (Hausinger) is the brains behind the team, thinking up crazy ideas and I am the labor,” Henshaw said.
