No description available.

No description available.

Ionising radiation (IR) induces a wide spectrum of lesions in DNA, including double- and single-strand breaks, abasic (AP) sites and a variety of base lesions. IR-induced damage to DNA can range from simple, isolated lesions to clustered DNA damage in which multiple lesions are formed, usually within a single helical turn of the DNA. Individual lesions within a cluster are recognised by repair enzymes of the base excision repair (BER) pathway, however, clustered DNA damage may be recognised as a bulky lesion and be processed by nucleotide excision repair (NER). Additionally, the presence of other closely spaced lesions may affect the rate and fidelity of DNA repair and, in doing so, may contribute to the harmful effects of ionising radiation. The aim of this study is to gain further understanding of the repairability of clustered DNA damage and the effects of multiple lesions on cellular repair systems. 7, 8-dihydro-8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG), thymine glycol (Tg), AP sites and single-strand breaks (SSB), some of the most frequently formed IR-induced DNA lesions, were employed in synthetic oligonucleotides to model various types of clustered lesions and their repairability was studied using purified base excision repair enzymes and cell extracts. It was revealed that BER is the major repair system involved in the processing of clustered DNA lesions, and that some clustered lesions are repaired with decreased efficiency. Both the composition of lesions in a cluster and the positioning of the various lesions determine their repairability by base excision repair enzymes.

No description available.

This thesis represents results of experiments involved in ultra-high resolution x-ray crystal structures of DNA. Detailed analysis of DNA coordinates of increased accuracy, refinement of individual anisotropic B-factors, visualization of disorder, counterions and hydration are presumably facilitated by the increased information of ultra-high resolution structures. However, recent survey of available DNA crystal structures with the data that extends beyond 1Ã... has brought a few areas of considerations; local conformational flexibility of DNA and counterions and how they have been interpreted in previous studies. While the results given here demonstrate both structural and surrounding details of DNA that may be undetected at lower resolution, some of the technical aspects of interpreting ultra-high resolution data is also addressed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Adelaide, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 267-287).

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 244-294). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2006. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Christa Merzdorf. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-55).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1989. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [83]-90).

Thesis (Ph.D)--University of Wollongong, 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 210-234.