The Positive And Biological Effects Of Radiation

Structure and function in Biology is a broad concept that can be explored within a diverse range of topics across the subject matter. The following essay will be focussed mainly on the subject of Deoxyribonucleic Acid, or more commonly DNA. DNA is a highly complex, intricate and extraordinary macromolecule found within all living cells. DNA is a "biochemical noun" and can be defined as "...a self-replicating material which is present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information." [Oxford Dictionary, c2016] DNA is found in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells, enclosed within a double membrane. Eukaryotic cells are multifaceted and require a high level of regulation to ensure smooth functioning. The double membrane of the nucleus allows gene expression, a key function of DNA, to be efficiently regulated.

On September 12, 1016, Belmont University graciously allowed Dr. Katherine Friedman from Vanderbilt University to come and talk to a crowd of students about the tendencies of how deoxyribose double stranded breaks can during cell replication and the elements required to hopefully repair this ordeal. She began the session by discussing what chromosomes are composed of and how they are produced, accompanied by visual and statistical representations. Moving on, she touched on how double strand breaks are a huge threat to a cell's, an organisms, stability. Correspondingly, she described what can cause these breaks; chemical factors, as well as inner cell disruptions during replication that are sometimes hard to remedy. However, she also stated that this breaks can occur on purpose, mostly in the immune system in efforts to make antibodies.

The damaged part of the DNA strand is nicked out by endonucleases that contain the dimer, which is then released from the DNA. After the fragment is released, DNA polymerase fills in the gap with a new strand and DNA ligase will close up the repaired strand.

Due to some circumstances being out of our control, whether it is through natural means of toxicity from radiation or unnatural means of radiation, how do we protect ourselves? The Earth is covered in natural background radiation. Terrestrial, cosmic and radon radiation are all a part of our environment. Even if manmade radiation and nuclear radiation didn’t exist, we would still be exposed to toxic, unhealthy sources of biological changing substances. How do our bodies recover from an assault to our immune systems and resume a healthy life from ionizing radiation that can cause cancer? How do we become proactive, and responsible for our own health outcome? Can we eliminate from our bodies unwanted toxins, carcinogens, free radicals, and ionizing substances? Do we have control over our health after a large dose of radiation from a nuclear accident, or treatment from radiation therapy? Evidence shows that we do. Just as there are natural sources of radiation, there are natural ways to cleanse our bodies and use nutrition to detoxify, rejuvenate, and restore health when our immunity has been compromised from natural or unnatural sources of radiation.

The process where food is exposed from nuclear sources consists of food irradiation, which is limited to high-energy gamma rays, X-rays and accelerated electrons. Ionizing is source of radiation because of the high-energy free electrons from atoms and molecules. The electrically charged particles are converted to ions. Microwaves are example of gamma rays. Accelerated electrons can transfuse to treat the food only to a depth of three centimeters. Due to thickness of x-rays may pass through the food.

 If the DNA is damaged, it can pass the damage on to new cells

DNA is a molecule that converts an organisms genetic blueprint. Every person’s body has the same DNA. Apportion of your DNA is located in the cells nucleus, but a small portion of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria. The DNA structure is very important because it defines who we are and how we look. The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. The nucleotides are joined to one another in a chain by covalent bonds between the sugar. human DNA have 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same as in all the humans in the world. DNA is a nucleic acid; proteins and carbohydrates, nucleic acids compose the three major macromolecules for all known

Ionizing radiationHelpIonizing radiationRadiation with so much energy it can knock electrons out of atoms. Ionizing radiation can affect the atoms in living things, so it poses a health risk by damaging tissue and DNA in genes. has sufficient energy to cause chemical changes in cells and damage them. Some cells may die or become abnormal, either temporarily or permanently. By damaging the genetic material

On November 8, 1895, a German physics professor named Wilhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays. This advance in technology helped man explore the unknown of the human body without performing surgery. Only the microscope could compete with x-rays in the “contribution to medical vision” (Gunderman 2). After the discovery of x-rays, researchers found that there were therapeutic and also cancerous results from radiation emissions. Before this discovery became public, the Radium Watch Company began coating their watch dials with radium in order for them to glow, to allow owners of these watches see the time, even at night. However, the women workers, as watch dial painters, at the company would wet there brushes with their mouths to create a finer point. After months of this practice, many of the women received cancerous tumors and necrosis of the jaw. As a result, most were buried in lead-lined coffins because of the high emissions of radiation from their bodies. Lead is now used to shield radiation from patients that are not receiving a full body scan. An x-ray is made from a beam of high energy photons passing through the body which are either diminished or blocked entirely when they hit subatomic particles, like bone or metal. The denser and thicker the substance the brighter the image on the radiograph. Both radiological scans, x-rays and CT scans both use ionizing radiation to capture the images of the human body.

DNA is a long curved structure, made up of pairs of four specific bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, is the repository of a code from which all of our cells are made. The code is made up of base pairs which look like the

In 2007, it is predicted that almost 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States (Pickle et al., 2007). More than half of these cancer patients will undergo the use of radiation as a means for treating cancer at some point during the course of their disease (Perez and Brady, 1998). Cancer, a disease caused by an uncontrollable growth of abnormal cells, affects millions of people around the world. Radiotherapy is one of the well known various methods used to treat cancer, where high powered rays are aimed directly at the tumor from the outside of the body as external radiation or an instrument is surgically placed inside the body producing a result of internal radiation. Radiation is delivered to the cancerous regions of the body to damage and destroy the cells in that area, terminating the rapid growth and division of the cells. Radiation therapy has been used by medicine as a treatment for cancer from the beginning of the twentieth century, with its earliest beginnings coming from the discovery of x-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen. With the advancements in physics and computer programming, radiation had greatly evolved towards the end of the twentieth century and made the radiation treatment more effective. Radiation therapy is a curative treatment approach for cancer because it is successful in killing cancerous tumor cells and stop them from regenerating.

The tissues and cells of the body are defined in both structure and composition. Ionizing radiation contains sufficient energy to break chemical bonds and as an example normal ionization has at least six times the energy required to break the bond of two carbon atoms (How does radiation affect humans?, n.d., Para 2). As chemical bonds are broken by this radiation, the structure and composition of the cell may be compromised. Effects may include broken or altered DNA chains which then contain compromised instructions for the cells. I consider this comparable to a corrupt file on the operating system of a computer where a majority of the needed files are correct, but the alteration is large enough that the computer cannot function properly.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule that carries the genetic information that is needed to direct and develop an organism’s activity. It is made up of four chemical nucleotide bases which are: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G). The DNA bases pair up specifically because they are on opposite strands, A pairs with T and C pairs with G, to form units called base pairs.

Deoxyribonucleic (DNA) is the molecule that hold the genetic information of living things. In our body every cell contains about 2 meters of DNA. DNA is copied every time a cell divides. Deoxyribonucleic (DNA) is made up of two polynucleotide strands. Polynucleotide strands twist around each other, forming a shape that looks like a ladder called a double helix. The two polynucleotide strands run antiaparallel to each other with nitrogenous bases this means that the stands run in opposite directions, parallel to one another. The DNA molecule consists of two backbones chains of sugars and phosphate groups. The organic bases held together by hydrogen bonds. Although bases bonded together are termed paired

Modification of damaged DNA seems to be an understudied subject, there is much to understand on the restoration of DNA damage, repair and DNA methylation. Genomic DNA can be modified by methylation but much of it is affected on a gene when silenced. When epigenetic modification has been implicated with cancer and aging it causes DNA methylation to also have an impact on the double strand of DNA analysis. Modification as such provoke deteriorating changes like aging found in multicellular organisms and DNA damage may magnify biochemical pathways that regulate a cells growth or control DNA replication with DNA repair. In the article “DNA Damage, Homology-Directed Repair, and DNA Methylation” written by Concetta Cuozzo, Antonio Porcellini, Tiziana Angrisano, et al. they hypothesize how DNA damage and gene silencing may induce a DNA double-strand break within a genome as well as when DNA methylation is induced by homologous recombination that it may somewhat mark its reparation through a DNA segment and protect its cells against any unregulated gene expression that may be followed by DNA damage. The experiments used to demonstration how gene conversion can modify methylation pattern of repaired DNA and when that occurs methylation is able to silence the recombined gene. When exploring the molecular mechanisms that link DNA damage and the silencing gene then there is an induced double strand break that can be found at a specific location or DNA sequence in where the