Damage Patrol: Enzyme may reveal cancer susceptibility
By Nathan Seppa
Breaks in a person’s DNA underlie the cancer-causing effects of cigarette smoke. Such DNA damage can lead to mutations that bring about the aberrant cell growth of cancer. But since not all smokers get lung cancer, scientists have assumed that some people mend their damaged DNA strands better than others do. With this in mind, researchers have been searching for enzymes that orchestrate DNA repair and mitigate cancer risk.
Now, scientists report that people with lung cancer are shortchanged when it comes to at least one type of DNA repair. Such patients show less activity of a repair enzyme called 8-oxoguanine DNA N-glycosylase (OGG) than people without the disease do, researchers say in the Sept. 3 Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The enzyme fixes DNA that’s been damaged by oxidation.