MIAMI – Over the course of a lifespan, from conception to death, each person encounters a wide variety of environmental stressors such as pollution, tobacco smoke, the sun’s rays, pharmaceutical agents, and some constituents of food. Evidence of the exposure and a person’s ability to metabolize these stressors is all hiding in the urine.
And since these stressors all have the potential to modify a person’s DNA, forming a wide variety of DNA adducts, researchers are finding it more and more important to keep track of them. It turns out, these exposures and the damage they cause, play a major role in the body developing illnesses like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease and others.
An emerging area in environmental health is DNA adductomics, the measurement of all the different kinds DNA adducts present in the cell’s genetic material. A team of researchers including Marcus S. Cooke, professor at FIU’s Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work in the department of environmental health sciences, is now moving the field forward by discovering a novel way to use urine samples to extract the information needed to study the body’s adducts.
This research looks to open new doors to better understand how environmental stressors affect a person’s genetic make-up, why some forms of damage are repaired more easily than others, together with how the damage eventually becomes life-threating illnesses.
“With this new approach, we can learn about human adducts more easily and in a far less invasive manner,” Cooke explained. “The best part is that the urine actually provides a fuller picture of the DNA damage, and its repair, than previous methods.”
DNA adductomics has typically used tissue samples, such as blood, to study the damage. However, this approach is difficult to apply to human populations, thus limiting who can be studied. Understanding from what environmental exposures these modifications arise, and their natural repair system in the body, could lead to life-saving interventions.
“By looking at what in the environment damages our DNA, and potentially identifying whether some individuals repair that damage better (or worse) than others, we can better understand the process of how and why illnesses form and, potentially, find interventions,” Cooke continued.
Currently, 50 percent of adults in the U.S. report suffering from one of six chronic illnesses: cardiovascular disease, cancer, cardiopulmonary disease, asthma diabetes, or arthritis. Studying DNA adducts brings medicine one-step closer to finding the causes of these illnesses and, potentially, the cure.
This study is supported, in part, by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) grant R15ES027196 to M.S. Cooke and by Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology grant MOST 106-2314-B-040-015-MY3 to M.R. Chao.
About Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work:
Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work inspires groundbreaking discoveries through interdisciplinary education in public health, dietetics and nutrition, social work and disaster preparedness from within a rigorous academic environment at Florida International University (FIU). The college’s three fully accredited disciplines blend course work, research and practice so students develop the skills they need to become future leaders. With an expansive network of more than 8,500 alumni, Stempel College is strengthening communities and influencing policy that promotes healthy lives for all—especially the most underserved. For more information, please visit Stempel.fiu.edu.
About FIU:
Florida International University, a public university located in Miami, has a passion for student success and community solutions. The university is classified by Carnegie as “R1.” FIU is among the top 100 public universities in U.S. News and World Report’s 2019 Best Colleges and 18 academic programs are individually ranked. FIU was recently ranked as the second best performing university in Florida and graduates are among the highest-paid in the state. FIU has multiple state-of-the-art research facilities including the Wall of Wind Research and Testing Facility and FIU’s Medina Aquarius Program. FIU has awarded more than 330,000 degrees since 1972 and enrolls more than 57,000 students in two campuses and centers including FIU Downtown on Brickell, FIU@I-75, the Miami Beach Urban Studios, and sites in Qingdao and Tianjin, China. FIU also supports artistic and cultural engagement through its three museums: Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, the Wolfsonian-FIU, and the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. FIU is a member of Conference USA with more than 400 student-athletes participating in 18 sports. For more information about FIU, visit www.fiu.edu.
