Dresden 2011 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 4: DNA \& DNA Enzymes
BP 4.10: Talk
Monday, March 14, 2011, 16:45–17:00, ZEU 260
The interplay of mutations and electronic properties in disease-associated genes — Chi-Tin Shih1,2, Stephen A Wells3, Ching-Lin Hsu4, Yun-Yin Cheng1, and •Rudolf A Römer3 — 1Department of Physics, Tunghai University, 40704 Taichung, Taiwan — 2The National Center for Theoretical Sciences, 30013 Hsinchu, Taiwan — 3Dept. of Physics and Ctr for Scientific Computing,University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK — 4Department of Physics, Chung-Yuan Christian University, Chung-Li, Taiwan
The electronic properties of DNA molecules are believed to play a crucial role in many phenomena taking place in living organisms, for example the detection of DNA lesions by base excision repair (BER) glycosylases such as Endonuclease III and MutY and the regulation of tumor-suppressor genes such as p53 by detection of oxidative damage. However, the reproducible measurement and modelling of charge migration through DNA molecules at the nanometer scale, in vitro or in vivo, remains a challenging and controversial subject even after more than a decade of intense efforts. Here we show, by analysing 162 disease-associated genes from a variety of medical databases with a total of almost 20000 known pathogenic mutations, a significant difference in the electronic properties of the population of pathogenic mutations compared to the set of all possible mutations. Comparison of the results for different models of charge transport suggests that it is the electronic properties of the coding strand, rather than the conductance of the double helix, that is significant.