Model aids understanding chemically induced cancer initiation.

This article reports that a team from the chemistry and biology departments of New York University, in collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), has uncovered a conformational switch, a change in shape in a carcinogendamaged DNA site, in tumor suppressor genes altered by a known cancer-causing chemical found in cigarette smoke. This finding may open new horizons for understanding the initiation of chemically induced cancers. The findings appear in the "Journal of Molecular Biology." This team was headed by Dinshaw Patel and Suse Broyde. In the study, the conformational switch discovered by the research team entails a change in the conformation of a carcinogen-damaged site in a DNA model sequence similar to that in a p53 mutation hot spot.