Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 29, Pages 11778-11783Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1104367108
Keywords
biophysics; femtobiology; radiobiology; radiotherapy; cancer
Categories
Funding
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research
- Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation
- Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
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Both water and electron-transfer reactions play important roles in chemistry, physics, biology, and the environment. Oxidative DNA damage is a well-known mechanism, whereas the relative role of reductive DNA damage is unknown. The prehydrated electron (e(pre)(-)), a novel species of electrons in water, is a fascinating species due to its fundamental importance in chemistry, biology, and the environment. e(pre)(-) is an ideal agent to observe reductive DNA damage. Here, we report both the first in situ femtosecond time-resolved laser spectroscopy measurements of ultrafast-electron-transfer (UET) reactions of e(pre)(-) with various scavengers (KNO3, isopropanol, and dimethyl sulfoxide) and the first gel electrophoresis measurements of DNA strand breaks induced by e(pre)(-) and OH center dot radicals co-produced by two-UV-photon photolysis of water. We strikingly found that the yield of reductive DNA strand breaks induced by each e(pre)(-) is twice the yield of oxidative DNA strand breaks induced by each OH center dot radical. Our results not only unravel the long-standing mystery about the relative role of radicals in inducing DNA damage under ionizing radiation, but also challenge the conventional notion that oxidative damage is the main pathway for DNA damage. The results also show the potential of femtomedicine as a new transdisciplinary frontier and the broad significance of UET reactions of e(pre)(-) in many processes in chemistry, physics, biology, and the environment.
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