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| Autumn 1999 issue | . | Bacteria-brand suncreen | |
LINKS: Chemistry and biochemistry at Notre Dame |
 When
they find themselves out in the sun, yeast and many other tiny organisms don=t have to worry (as if they could) about solar
radiation destroying them, which it would. The organisms have a special enzyme that
repairs damage to their DNA caused by ultraviolet light.Scientists now believe it may one day be possible to create an artificial form of that enzyme C a product of the famous E. coli bacterium C and give humans the same kind of ability to repair sun damage before skin cancer can take hold. That effort has been given a boost by a team of chemists and students led by Olaf Wiest, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry. Earlier this year, Wiest=s research team reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society that it has constructed the first computer model of the chemical structure of the E. coli enzyme. The model Aprovides the framework to think about the mode of action of the enzyme, make predictions, and develop experiments to test these predictions,@ Wiest says. The lead author on the paper reporting the creation of the model was a Notre Dame undergraduate, Don B. Sanders =99, now enrolled in a medical scientist program. Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. Its prevalence has been rising steadily for 20 years with an estimated 1.4 million cases now diagnosed annually. |
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