Mobile phones 'alter human DNA'

[emad]

BBC News

Radio waves from mobile phones do harm body cells and damage DNA, a laboratory study has shown.

But the European Union-funded Reflex research did not prove such changes were a risk to human health.

The scientists behind the study said more research was needed to determine the actual effect of the phones on health.

But the UK National Radiological Protection Board said people should not be worried by the study's findings.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4113989.stm

[atommom]

1. Not to worry, it's just our DNA .....

I hope this doesn't turn out to be a serious health threat. I love my cellphone, but I'd rather it didn't mutate my cells.

[NNadir]

2. I really don't believe this.

Radio waves do not have enough energy to break bonds.

More typically they can produce conformational changes, but DNA goes through conformational dynamics all the time. That's part of how it works.

The energy to break bonds really begins in the UV area, although visible light has sufficient energy to effect certain transformations, those in chlorophyll for instance.

[slutticus]

3. Nor do I.

Here's my reply from a similar post...


These conclusions sound strange.


I didn't think that simply having single or double stranded DNA breaks was enough to cause mutations. In order for a mutation to occur, the bases themselves have to be altered, such as the pyrimidine dimers caused by UV radiation. In a worst case scenario, a cell with broken nucleic acid material will simply die. No mutations will be propagated from simply breaking the DNA, right? It's been a while since I've read about DNA repair machanisms. It may have something to do with recombination events. Hmmmm...



I'm interested in seeing the paper that comes out of this.

[Sufi Marmot]

4. Can't you get gross chromosomal rearrangements from broken DNA?

Some leukemias are caused by translocations that fuse together two disparate gene products into an oncogene. I'm not saying this is going to be a common event from regular cell phone use, but when cells suffer double strand breaks, they try to repair them, and the results aren't always ideal. There are mechanisms of DNA repair which don't involve copying from the other chromosome (non-homolgous end-joining, for instance), so genetic information can be lost or altered. In multicellular eukaryotes, death is the best thing that can happen when a cell suffers a double strand break, IMHO.

-SM

[slutticus]

5. Yes, you're right....but...

...I still can't see how radio waves can break phosphodiester bonds.

It doesn't make sense.

[Sufi Marmot]

6. Point noted...

It seems that this would be really easy to test using a bacterial or lower eukaryotic model organism (i.e. yeast) where the genetic tools exist to study all types of recombination in excrutiating detail...

-SM, who always gets a headache trying to mentally resolve Holliday junctions...

[slutticus]

7. Yeah. I wonder what model organism they used.

Seems like yeast or E. coli would be the best bets. Maybe study the rates of plasmid recombination or something like that.

I wonder where they're going to publish this.