DNA damage – News, Research and Analysis – The Conversation

Tardigrades – also known as moss piglets – prefer damp environments, but they can survive just about anywhere. Thomas Shahan/Flickr

October 30, 2025

Water bears survive cosmic radiation with one DNA‑protecting protein – learning how could boost human resilience, too

Tardigrades make a unique damage suppressor protein that researchers are working to harness for medicine, space, agriculture, data storage and more.

Double-strand breaks in DNA can be deadly. Victor Golmer/iStock via Getty Images Plus

June 16, 2025

RNA has newly identified role: Repairing serious DNA damage to maintain the genome

Francesca Storici, Georgia Institute of Technology

Researchers discovered a previously unknown function of RNA, potentially opening the door to new ways to treat cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Babies and toddlers have thinner skins than adults and need extra protection from the sun. Getty Images

January 3, 2025

Babies and toddlers get sunburnt easily: how to keep them safe

Bianca Tod, Stellenbosch University

Sun exposure can cause mutations that promote skin cancer. Getting them early in life means they have more time to overwhelm the body’s protective mechanisms.

While some people may be older in chronological age, their biological age might be much younger. FangXiaNuo/E+ via Getty Images

July 6, 2023

Aging is complicated – a biologist explains why no two people or cells age the same way, and what this means for anti‑aging interventions

Ellen Quarles, University of Michigan

Aging is a culmination of factors spanning from your cells to your environment. A number of interconnected processes determine how quickly your body is able to repair and recover from damage.

Phages can sense bacterial DNA damage, which triggers them to replicate and jump ship. Design Cells/iStock via Getty Images Plus

September 15, 2022

Viruses may be ‘watching’ you – some microbes lie in wait until their hosts unknowingly give them the signal to start multiplying and kill them

Ivan Erill, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Phages, or viruses that infect bacteria, can lie dormant within chromosomes until they’re triggered to replicate and burst out of their hosts.

Telomeres (red) at the ends of chromosomes protect your DNA from damage. Thomas Ried/NCI Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health via Flickr

July 19, 2022

Cells become zombies when the ends of their chromosomes are damaged – a tactic both helpful and harmful for health

Patricia Opresko, University of Pittsburgh and Ryan Barnes, University of Pittsburgh

The protective caps at the ends of chromosomes naturally shorten over time. Researchers found that direct damage can prematurely trigger senescence and contribute to age-related diseases like cancer.

May 10, 2018

Chemotherapy timing could influence how well the treatment works

Yanyan Yang, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Aziz Sancar, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Circadian clocks regulate the timing of hundreds of processes in the cell, suggesting that matching medications with your biological clock could improve the outcome

Listening to audio derived from DNA may help scientists better understand how cell biology works. Mark Temple

June 20, 2017

What does DNA sound like? Using music to unlock the secrets of genetic code

Mark Temple, Western Sydney University

Converting a DNA sequence into an audio could help us learn something useful about it, like where mutations occur.

You’d be in bad shape if your cells couldn’t fix DNA issues that arise. redondoself

October 8, 2015

Chemistry Nobel DNA research lays foundation for new ways to fight cancer

Rachel Litman Flynn, Boston University

Cells must repair the thousands of bits of DNA damage they incur every day. These cellular mechanisms fend off cancerous tumors, and cancer researchers are working to harness their power.

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