PARP1 tagged posts

A solid bond: New research led by Harvard Medical School reveals that interaction between the protein DBC1 and the signaling molecule NAD+ may help ward off DNA damage. Photo credit: David Bolinsky, e.mersion studios, 2017 

DNA repair is essential for cell vitality, survival and cancer prevention, yet cells’ ability to patch up damaged DNA declines with age for reasons not fully understood. Now, research led by scientists at Harvard Medical School reveals a critical step in a molecular chain of events that allows cells to mend their broken DNA. The findings offer a critical insight into how and why the body’s ability to fix DNA dwindles over time and point to a previously unknown role for the signaling molecule NAD as a key regulator of protein-to-protein interactions in DNA repair...

Telomeres glow at the end of chromosomes. Credit: Hesed Padilla-Nash and Thomas Ried of the NIH

New method may speed understanding of short telomere diseases and cancer and the new method they used to find it should speed discovery of other proteins and processes that determine telomere length. “We’ve known for a long time that telomerase doesn’t tell the whole story of why chromosomes’ telomeres are a given length, but with the tools we had, it was difficult to figure out which proteins were responsible for getting telomerase to do its work,” saysProf. Carol Greider, Ph.D (winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of telomerase.)

Figuring out exactly what’s needed to lengthen telomeres has broad health implications as shortened telomeres have been implicat...