Scientists have discovered a protein that can directly halt DNA damage. Better yet, a new study shows it appears to be ‘plug and play’, theoretically able to slot into any organism, making it a promising candidate for a cancer vaccine.
DNA damage response protein C (DdrC) was found in a hardy little bacterium called Deinococcus radiodurans. DdrC seems to be very effective at detecting DNA damage, putting a stop to it and alerting the cell to start the repair process.
But DdrC’s best feature might be that it’s pretty self-contained, doing its job without the help of other proteins.
Every cell has a DNA repair mechanism to fix damage. “With a human cell, if there are any more than two breaks in the entire billion base pair genome, it can’t fix itself and it dies,” he says. “But in the case of DdrC, this unique protein helps the cell to repair hundreds of broken DNA fragments into a coherent genome.”
Turns out that DdrC scans for breaks along the DNA and when it detects one it snaps shut – like a mousetrap. This trapping action has two key functions: “It neutralizes it (the DNA damage), and prevents the break from getting damaged further. And it acts like a little molecular beacon. It tells the cell ‘Hey, over here. There’s damage. Come fix it.”
The team was curious whether the protein might function as a “plug-in” for other DNA repair systems. They tested this by adding it to a different bacterium: E. coli. “To our huge surprise, it actually made the bacterium over 40 times more resistant to UV radiation damage,” he says. “This seems to be a rare example where you have one protein and it really is like a standalone machine.”
He says that, in theory, this gene could be introduced into any organism – plants, animals, humans – and it should increase the DNA repair efficiency of that organism’s cells. “The ability to rearrange and edit and manipulate DNA in specific ways is the holy grail in biotechnology,” says Szabla. “What if you had a scanning system such as DdrC which patrolled your cells and neutralized damage when it happened? This might form the basis of a potential cancer vaccine.”
And here’s the actual study (pretty deep science - hard to interpret).
@ng0rge@Walter_Brown The question that comes to my mind is, How to improve human DNA repair systems in a healthy way? And the questions: What do we face if repair systems become overactive or become misdirected? Will it repair damaged parts of unhealthy DNA? Intervention aimed at boosting DNA repair must be thought through so that we don’t get an overactive DNA repair that might assist cells with pre-cancerous mutations to survive or prevent the normal elimination of cells with significant genomic damage.
There are many more things to come from studying Deinococcus. From their paper. "The Western team is just getting started studying Deinococcus. “DdrC is just one out of hundreds of potentially useful proteins in this bacterium. The next step is to prod further, look at what else this cell uses to fix its own genome – because we’re sure to find many more tools where we have no idea how they work or how they’re going to be useful until we look.”
Deinococcus survives massive radiation and can survive a long time outside the space station. Another fascinating animal are species of Tardigrade.
Tardigrades can enter an almost lifeless state—referred to as a “tun”—in which they drastically reduce their metabolic activity. This state enables them to endure extreme dehydration, rapid temperature changes, high levels of radiation, and even the vacuum of space.
Recent research has identified specific protective proteins in tardigrades, such as Dsup (damage suppressor protein). Dsup binds to DNA and helps decrease damage from radiation and oxidative stress, thereby contributing to their resilience.
The protective protein is found in the bacteria. The bacteria can be found in dried food. I don’t think that eating the dried food will supply the body with this particular protein.
These observations point at the importance of the transitory machinery of the cell. How can the production of proteins be more stable and produce proteins correctly, in the first place? And in the second place, hot to avoid accumulations that are not translated correctly? Like, how to get rid of misfolded proteins that are accumulated in our body.