Skin cancer’s DNA legacy
Many bacteria and some mammalian cells can repair damage caused to their DNA by ultraviolet and ionising radiation by removing damaged regions and replacing them. The failure of such repair mechanisms is responsible for one form of malignant skin disease.
Two types of DNA repair mechanism exist, and these are called photoreactivation and dark repair. The former is the simpler, acting only on UV damage and functioning only in light. The second is termed dark repair because cells with this ability can repair their DNA in the dark. This is a more useful mechanism to a…
