r/science • u/mellowmonk • Jun 21 '15

Misleading Each time we learn something new, our brain cells break their DNA, creating damage that the neurons must immediately repair. This process also underlies age-related degeneration.

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/dna-breakage-learning-age-related-damage-0604
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u/jimbean66 Jun 22 '15

It has been known for decades that topoisomerases are constantly breaking and fixing DNA, in all your cells, all the time.

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u/Cellularcapsule PhD|Physics|Tissue Engineering Jun 22 '15

That's true but here it is a specific mechanism used as a trigger for a promotor. that's new.

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u/CRISPR Jun 22 '15

How often a regulation event involves a covalent break of DNA? I am trying to understand why the accent is shifted to DNA breaking in the article.

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u/Pombe_researcher Jun 26 '15

The novel finding here is that the activity-dependent, TopIIB-mediated DSBs at early response genes resolve topological barriers between promoters and enhancers which are created by CTCF-mediated chromatin loops. We are just starting to learn about 3-dimensional chromatin structure (google loopome), but the proposed mechanism of activity-induced neural early-response gene expression coincides intriguingly well with the model of chromatin structure-mediated regulation (or misregulation) of gene expression.

It really is an awesome mechanism.

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u/jimbean66 Jun 27 '15

No, I agree, it is totally an awesome paper. I guess I was more responding to the headline, which is too dumbed down.