Chemist will discuss how DNA is like phone wire
Your DNA can be damaged like a long-distance telephone wire, and a researcher speaking in Ottawa this week is figuring out how your body fixes its banged-up wiring.
Jacqueline Barton of the California Institute of Technology has found that DNA turns itself into an electric wire, carrying signals that diagnose trouble.
The chemistry professor will explain her work in this year’s Herzberg Lecture, an annual public event at Carleton University.
It is at 7 p.m. Wednesday on the second level of Richcraft Hall, formerly the River Building.
The event is free, but advance registration online is required. (Go to science.carleton.ca/herzberg-lecture.)
“A while ago we discovered that DNA, besides being the library of the cell, also in some context can serve as a wire,” Barton said.
“It can facilitate the transfer of electrons through the DNA. And that ends up being important in the context of how mistakes in DNA are found and how they are fixed.”
The best example she knows is the work of telephone repair crews.
“How did telephone repairmen find a mistake in the line? They would go up (a pole) and if they could talk to each other across the line, then everything was fine. And they would home in on where the break in the line was by looking for where they couldn’t talk to each other anymore.”