TY  - GEN
A1  - Ebel, Kenny
A1  - Bald, Ilko
T1  - Length and Energy Dependence of Low-Energy Electron-Induced Strand Breaks in Poly(A) DNA
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - The DNA in living cells can be effectively damaged by high-energy radiation, which can lead to cell death. Through the ionization of water molecules, highly reactive secondary species such as low-energy electrons (LEEs) with the most probable energy around 10 eV are generated, which are able to induce DNA strand breaks via dissociative electron attachment. Absolute DNA strand break cross sections of specific DNA sequences can be efficiently determined using DNA origami nanostructures as platforms exposing the target sequences towards LEEs. In this paper, we systematically study the effect of the oligonucleotide length on the strand break cross section at various irradiation energies. The present work focuses on poly-adenine sequences (d(A₄), d(A₈), d(A₁₂), d(A₁₆), and d(A₂₀)) irradiated with 5.0, 7.0, 8.4, and 10 eV electrons. Independent of the DNA length, the strand break cross section shows a maximum around 7.0 eV electron energy for all investigated oligonucleotides confirming that strand breakage occurs through the initial formation of negative ion resonances. When going from d(A₄) to d(A₁₆), the strand break cross section increases with oligonucleotide length, but only at 7.0 and 8.4 eV, i.e., close to the maximum of the negative ion resonance, the increase in the strand break cross section with the length is similar to the increase of an estimated geometrical cross section. For d(A₂₀), a markedly lower DNA strand break cross section is observed for all electron energies, which is tentatively ascribed to a conformational change of the dA₂₀ sequence. The results indicate that, although there is a general length dependence of strand break cross sections, individual nucleotides do not contribute independently of the absolute strand break cross section of the whole DNA strand. The absolute quantification of sequence specific strand breaks will help develop a more accurate molecular level understanding of radiation induced DNA damage, which can then be used for optimized risk estimates in cancer radiation therapy.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 814 
KW  - DNA origami
KW  - DNA radiation damage
KW  - DNA strand breaks
KW  - low-energy electrons
KW  - sequence dependence
Y1  - 2020
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/44412
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-444125
SN  - 1866-8372
IS  - 814
ER  -