Children of the Sun, Children of the Moon—A Mini-Panel for Assessment of Inter-Individual Variation Between the Capacity of Healthy Individuals to Repair Everyday Genotoxic Insults

ABSTRACT

The DNA repair machinery of healthy human cells usually manages the consequences of the daily barrage of DNA damage for years and decades before any adverse effects related to genotoxic impact become manifest. There is significant variance, however, even between healthy individuals, in regard to their ability to detect and repair genotoxic damage. Some aspects of this variance exist throughout the life of the individual (genetic factors, such as polymorphisms in genes coding for products acting in the repair of DNA damage), while others (e.g. telomere length) may be the outcome of the genotype-phenotype interplay, modified by environmental factors. Numerous markers for assessment of capacity to combat genotoxic damage have been described so far, with only some of them having a value of their own under physiological and/or pathological conditions. In the present study we provide the results from the evaluation of a mini-panel (p53 P72R, XPCins83PAT, rate of telomere attrition) for assessing the capacity of healthy individuals to repair genotoxic damage, and outline the possible fields of application.

Keywords:

• p53
• XPC
• telomere length
• risk assessment
• genotoxic damage