Keeping DNA healthy
Transcriber: Thanh Van Dang
Reviewer: Emma Gon
Looking at statistics,
it is safe to assume
that 40% of you have picked up
a sunburn at some point during last year.
That is maybe not the case
if you have been the whole summer
of 2021 in Trondheim
and there is up to 70% chance
that you have experienced smoke
from one of more than
1.1 billion smokers worldwide.
And I take a liberty to say that nearly
100% of us experience stress at some point
either due to deadlines
at school universities job
or privately during last year.
But why am I throwing
these numbers at you?
It is because the factors in our
environment, such as sunlight and smoke,
but also our inner processes such as
metabolism and inside products,
are influencing the way how we develop,
how we function and how we age.
And from very early on,
I was curious about human health
and also how our everyday
life is affecting us.
How, for example, the way
we sit affects our posture.
And this led to many
different experiments,
such as mapping of
the flora and the local park,
but also with a friend in
high school testing,
how does the water from
the outlets of oil industry affects
the living organisms
such as aquatic snails?
Which was particularly
interesting to me was
that while the animals were not
visibly affected by the water,
analysis of their blood like
fluids indicated small
but potentially long lasting impacts,
such as shortened life span or even
potentially impacts on their offspring.
And like water, also, our environment
is affecting our bodies,
and you all know
that long days at the beach
or long and many sunny
days in the mountains
are going to increase
development of skin cancer.
It’s not only our environment,
it’s also our life choices,
such as, for example, smoking
that is impacting our health.
So how exactly do the sunlight
and smoking affect our bodies?
What exactly do they do to our health?
They cause damage, they damage
essential building blocks of our bodies
by inducing small molecular changes
that can either change
the functions of these molecules
or they can completely inactivate them.
Our bodies are built of
more than 30 trillion cells.
And in each cell of our body,
there are 46 biomolecules
that they’re containing
the information of life.
These biomolecules
are also known as DNA
shortly for the deoxyribonucleic acid.
DNA is like a perfect world
map of our body.
It contains the information about
its continents, tissues and organs,
but also information about different
cities and villages, different cell types.
And just like every map,
DNA is composed of lettering.
This lettering gives meaning
to cities and regions.
In each cell of our body,
there’s 6 billion letters.
And when organized together,
they give a 2 meter long molecule
that is then compacted in
20 to 30 micrometers small cell.
If we would now be able
to do the experiment
and take a DNA from
all the cells of our body
and pave them end to end,
we would be able to reach from
Earth to Sun and back, 300 times.
That’s a long journey.
But what is very fascinating
is that it takes only a handful
of changes in the letters
for diseases such as brain disorders
or cancer to occur.
And in fact, our world maps are
continuously impacted by the environment,
by our inner processes.
So even as you’re sitting right now
here and listening to me talk
without any exposure to the sunlight
and hopefully no stress,
140 changes in the lettering
of your body maps
will occur in every cell of your body.
That’s a large number,
but this number can also have
important consequences.
It can change the destination
on your body maps.
So that all of a sudden a bus then with
a B is going to become fast and with an F
and instead in Massachusetts, you’re
going to end up in Lincolnshire, England.
So, in ourselves, the changes
in DNA lettering can also impact
the proteins are not going to
be correctly localized.
So instead, in the middle of the cell,
the protein is all of a sudden going
to end up on the periphery.
And with it, it’s not going to be able
to execute its functions.
Such as, for example, control
of the sound application.
And now the cells with the changed
lettering will also have new properties.
They might be able to divide faster.
We all like to think
that diseases such as cancer
or brain disorders are not
going to happen to us,
or at least not
until we’re very, very old.
But there is a reasonable chance
that 40% of us are going to get diagnosed
with cancer at some point of our life.
That means that 40 people in this room
of 100 is going to present with cancer.
These are very different types of cancers
and a relatively large number.
But still, this number cannot
be directly related to the fact
that we have all experienced
the sunburn at some point in our life.
So how is it that despite
getting a sunburn,
not all of us are going
to develop skin cancer?
And what is it in our bodies
that despite all those changes
in the lettering, our bodies
can still send the messages
to its cities and destinations.
This is because on the journey of life,
besides a map that allows
us to go from A to B,
our bodies are equipped with
an inner Swiss Army knife.
And this knife, just like its original,
comes with many different tools,
tools that allow us to reach mislabeled
destinations, despite of the obstacles.
Once when the mislabelled
destination is reached,
the tools are going to be used to change
the letters and to repair them.
So the future safe journeys can be taken.
Depending if only one letter is changed,
if the whole world is missing or
if the whole part of the map is lacking,
different tools are used,
also known as DNA repair mechanisms.
Our inner Swiss Army knives are
absolutely essential for our health,
and without them,
life would not be possible.
But every system has its limitations.
Upon extensive and frequent
exposure to the sunlight
or many years of smoking and stress,
our body maps are going
to keep on accumulating
a large number of letter changes
to the point that even the most
sophisticated Swiss Army knife
is not going to be able to repair them.
And others and I have shown
that the inability to repair
and the lack of tools is going to lead
to accumulation of mislabeled letters
and consequently start of diseases.
If we were to compare the healthy cell map
and the map of a cell affected by disease
such as cancer or brain disorders,
what we would quickly see is
that the number of the mislabeled
and damaged letters and
the map of the affected cells
is a lot larger than
on the healthy cell map
to the point that affected cells even
have slightly new, different maps.
On this new different maps,
the cancer cells can a lot quicker
reach key destinations,
but at the cost of falling off track.
However, as long as the key destinations
can be reached very quick,
the cancer is going to thrive.
And at a point when the amount
of damage becomes so extensive
that even the key destinations
become mislabeled,
the cancer is going to collapse
and with it, the systems.
These are two important properties,
the key maps and the large amount
of damaged letters in these cells,
and they are used as a basis
to develop new therapies.
New drugs are designed to
either specifically inactivate
the key destinations or to further
increase the amount of damaged letters,
so that the cancer
can be eradicated a lot faster
before it becomes toxic to our bodies.
On our journey from
Earth to the Sun and back,
we have been exposed to
many different environments.
Our body maps are accumulating
damage letters and with it,
the risk of diseases is increasing.
Our inner Swiss Army knives
are working to its full capacity,
trying to repair its many damaged
letters as possible.
But we should be aware
that our body maps are fragile
and our knives have finite capacities.
And therefore, it is important
that we, too, do our part
in order to stay healthy
and to support our systems.
But how can we do that?
Should we now avoid the sun at all cost
and all the activities
that involve sunlight?
Absolutely not.
The knowledge
that we have about our inner maps
and about our repair systems,
our army knives should be used
rather in making everyday choices.
We do need our journeys
to see beautiful destinations.
And we do need sunlight
for vitamin D production.
So the knowledge that we are
having about our body maps
and our nner Swiss knives
should be used to help us understand
that not every exposure to sunlight
and not every type of stress
is going to be harmful.
Instead, we do need sunlight.
And when you go home tonight and
you’re going to plan your next day,
I would like you
to shortly stop and to think,
did I take enough time
to take care of my health,
to support my body maps?
And when I’m planning the next family
dinner for the coming holidays,
do I need to spend a whole day in
the kitchen making all those dishes?
Or could I make just a little bit less
but still delicious dishes
and have a little bit more time
to rest before meeting everyone?
Thank you.