Grant: Operating Grant

The technological age has seen humans increasingly exposed to sources of DNA-damaging radiation. A double-edged sword, radiation has enabled great advances in energy, medical diagnosis and therapy while simultaneously increasing our risk of nuclear accident or attack. The most deleterious lesion caused by radiation is a break in both strands of our DNA, a DNA double-strand break (DSB). Unless accurately repaired by the molecular machinery of our cells, DSBs can lead to genome instability - a fundamental driver of cancer and ageing. We now know that DSBs are much more difficult to repair within certain regions of chromatin, that complex of protein and DNA within which all our genetic information resides. My research endeavors to understand the processes underlying DNA repair in chromatin and, in doing so, improve our knowledge of how radiation exposure influences cancer formation and human ageing, as well as increasing the efficacy of radiation therapy and radiation protection measures.