Summit supercomputer draws molecular blueprint for repairing damaged DNA
Bio-SANS, the Biological Small-Angle Neutron Scattering Instrument at HFIR recently had a detector upgrade that will provide significantly improved performance that is more in line with the instrument’s capability.
We now know that many serious diseases have genetic links that a geneticist can find by reading an individual’s genome─the DNA double helix where our organism’s hereditary information is encoded. Researchers know too that a particular protein protects our DNA, which is vulnerable to entanglement when its information is read and to attack from enzymes that damage the strands, making the code indecipherable.
Researchers at the at the used small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) to get a first insight into the conformation of single polyelectrolyte chains in large pieces of the synthetic complex. The research pursues applications for replacement of intervertebral discs in the spine and of knee cartilage.