Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 14, 2026

Application of Laser Micro-irradiation for Examination of Single and Double Strand Break Repair in Mammalian Cells
Published on: September 5, 2017
Irradiation of GAPDH: a model for environmentally induced protein damage
Peter Voss1, Hossein Hajimiragha, Martina Engels
1Research Institute for Environmental Medicine, Molecular Aging Research, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
Abstract:
Environmental factors, including sunlight, are able to induce severe oxidative protein damage. The modified proteins are either repaired, degraded or escape from degradation and aggregate. In the present study we tested the effect of different sunlight components such as UV-A, UV-B, and infrared radiation on protein oxidation in vitro. We chose glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) as a model enzyme and analyzed the irradiation-induced enzyme activity loss, fragmentation and aggregation, and quantified various oxidative amino acid modifications. Since gamma-irradiation was used in numerous studies before, we used it for comparative purposes. Infrared radiation was unable to damage GAPDH in the dose range tested (0-1000 J/cm(2)). UV-A led to a decrease in free thiol content, which was connected with a loss in enzyme activity, while only at very high doses could moderate protein aggregation and fragmentation be observed. UV-B (0-2 J/cm(2)) and gamma-irradiation (0-500 Gy) led to a dose-dependent increase in protein modification. Interestingly, UV-B acted on specific amino acids, such as arginine, proline, and tyrosine, whereas gamma-irradiation acted more randomly. The possibility of using the amino acid oxidation pattern as a biomarker of the source of damage is discussed.
Related Concept Videos
Nucleotide Excision Repair
Cells are regularly exposed to mutagens—factors in the environment that can damage DNA and generate mutations. UV radiation is one of the most common mutagens and is estimated to introduce a significant number of changes in DNA. These include bends or kinks in the structure, which can block DNA replication or transcription. If these errors are not fixed, the damage can cause mutations, which in turn can result in cancer or disease depending on which sequences are...
Nucleotide Excision Repair
Mutations
Chromosomal Alterations Are Large-Scale Mutations
While point mutations are changes in a single nucleotide in...
Spontaneous and Induced Mutations
Reporter Genes
Commonly used reporter...

