PRBB-CRG Sessions Ketan J. Patel

11/04/202512:00MARIE CURIEPRBB-CRG SessionsKetan J. PatelWeatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine"DNA fragility and the chemistry of normal life"Host: Vivek MalhotraAbstract:I will discuss the fragility of DNA the blue print of life. How this fragility arises, what damages this vital molecule, and how our cells try to repair this. This repeated cycle of damage and repair drives wear and tear of the DNA molecule which ultimately leads to mutations causing our cells to be miss-instructed and become cancerous and this can also cause our cells to age. I will specifically talk about our own research which lead to the surprising discovery of how alcohol through its conversion in our cells into a reactive aldehyde, damages DNA in this manner. I will end my talk about how this clue lead us to discover that our body produces the embalming chemical formaldehyde, which appears to be a ubiquitous source of DNA damage in all our cells. I shall also describe how formaldehyde mutates DNA in a very unusual manner and may contribute to a common mutation signature seen in ageing tissues.