Genome-Protecting Natural Compounds and Analysis of Antigenotoxicity

Dear Colleagues,

Chemical compounds from natural sources, such as plants and microorganisms, have been studied extensively for their biological properties. Pathways of secondary metabolism from many plants and microorganisms are diverse, leading to the synthesis of a wide array of molecules with biological activities. These activities have been studied extensively, which has allowed the identification and isolation of compounds that are used in medicine, nutraceuticals, and cosmetics as antibacterial, antifungal or antitumor, among other properties. For antitumor activity, there are many compounds with mechanisms of action targeting the biological processes of tumorigenesis. Since one of the most important causes of tumorigenesis is DNA damage, compounds that protect DNA from damage have great potential in cancer prevention and are suitable to be used, for instance, in nutraceuticals and as food additives.

Analysis of antigenotoxicity is technically challenging due to the characteristics of DNA. Techniques based on antibodies against specific chemical modifications of DNA are extremely difficult to create since DNA is structurally homogeneous. On the other hand, techniques based on electrophoretic separation have low sensitivity unless isotopic labeling with radioactivity is used. Although the comet assay is well accepted among the scientific community, there are issues regarding standardization among laboratories. Therefore, new methods for DNA damage assessment would be particularly useful to improve research on DNA damage repair, antigenotoxicity, and cancer prevention.

In this Special Issue of Molecules, we will accept papers and reviews addressing these topics with special emphasis on the identification of new antigenotoxic compounds, elucidation of mechanisms of antigenotoxicity of known and new natural compounds, methods for assessment DNA damage, and improvements of known methods.

Dr. Rui Oliveira
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Natural antigenotoxic compounds
• Antitumor
• Tumorigenesis
• DNA damage
• DNA damage repair
• Cell cycle
• DNA damage assessment
• Comet assay