A multidisciplinary team of Indiana University researchers have discovered that the motion of chromatin, the fabric that DNA is fabricated from, may help facilitate effective repair of DNA damage within the human nucleus — a finding that may lead to improved cancer diagnosis and treatment. Their findings were recently published within the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

DNA damage happens naturally in human body and many of the damage will be repaired by the cell itself. Nonetheless, unsuccessful repair may lead to cancer.

“DNA within the nucleus is all the time moving, not static. The motion of its high-order complex, chromatin, has a direct role in influencing DNA repair,” said Jing Liu, an assistant professor of physics within the School of Science at IUPUI. “­In yeast, past research shows that DNA damage promotes chromatin motion, and the high mobility of it also facilitates the DNA repair. Nonetheless, in human cells this relationship is more complicated.”

Liu and his colleagues found that chromatin on the positioning of DNA damage moves much faster than those away from the DNA damage. In addition they found that the chromatin in cell nuclei isn’t moving randomly. It is a coherent movement, with the DNA moving as a gaggle over a brief distance.

The researchers also found evidence that DNA damage may affect the DNA’s group movement by reducing the coherence. These findings indicate that chromatin motion is under tight control when DNA is broken. This is significant to stop the damaged DNA from harmful contact and to enhance the accuracy and efficacy of DNA repair, Liu said.

“Our findings reveal a fundamental role of the chromatin motion in DNA damage response and DNA repair,” Liu said. “These findings may help to know the mechanism of DNA repair in human cells and cancer initiation in humans. Practically, we will use these findings because the metrics for the drug response of many various drugs used to treat cancer. We will test different drugs to see if the chromatin motion will be modified to boost DNA repair.”

As a way to conduct this research, Liu and his colleagues needed to develop the computational tools obligatory for analyzing massive amounts of information. With data sizes as large as a terabyte in some cases, Liu and his colleagues worked with IU’s University Information Technology Services to ascertain the Scalable Data Archive of highly dynamic cell images, which centralizes data storage, data transfer, and data processing.

In the long run, the researchers hope to review single DNA molecules and the way they’re moving, and the way individual and group dynamics differ and alter in response to DNA damage. They’d also wish to learn more about DNA movement in specific genes which can be known to be more vulnerable to DNA damage.

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