By DIANE HELDT
Staff Writer
A technology developed by two Iowa State University scientists to study how cancer-producing compounds damage cellular DNA has been combined with another technology to form a tool that provides even more information about DNA damage.
Ames Laboratory researchers Ryszard Jankowiak and Gerald Small joined their fluorescence line-narrowing spectroscopy (FLNS) technique, which studies what happens to DNA after it is attacked, with capillary electrophoresis (CE), a widely used analytical separations method, to better study DNA damage that leads to cell mutations.
Although CE and FLNS are powerful techniques for separation and characterization of molecules, each has certain limitations when used separately for the study of complex biological mixtures, Small said. In combination, the limitations are eliminated, providing a powerful tool for structural characterization, he said.
"When your DNA is attacked, there are certain chemical compounds produced that would appear in your urine, but there are hundreds of compounds in your urine, so it's like looking for a few needles in a haystack," he said. "The combination of both of these technologies can do that."
The new combined technology has been successfully used to identify byproducts in urine that result from the chemistry between cellular DNA and cancer-producing pollutants, such as those found in cigarette smoke, Small said.
The identification of these byproducts, called DNA adducts, is key to understanding the first step of cancer -- the chemical attack of DNA by the pollutant, Small said.
"Everyone knows what these compounds are, they just don't know exactly what they do when they enter the body," he said. "A very important unsolved problem is which of the damages to DNA lead to a mutation that leads to cancer. We need to know which damage really leads to the mutation in the end, which this technology can provide insight on."
Though Small and Jankowiak have studied the technology mainly on DNA damage from chemical carcinogens, it can be applied to many other areas of biological research, as well as forensic science, Small said.
"Our technology has applicability well beyond just the problem of cancer. It could be used for virtually any biological problem where one has to deal with and unravel complex biological mixtures," he said. "We haven't even begun to explore all of the possibilities yet."
Small and Jankowiak, who have been working on the technology for about three years, have a patent pending on it, and several companies are interested in it, Small said. They hope to have it licensed and on the market in three years, he said.
The research has been supported by the Department of Energy and the Ames Lab.
Published Feb. 24, 1998
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Last revision: 4/17/98 sd
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