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Scientific Correspondence
Nature 397, 398-399 (4 February 1999) | doi:10.1038/17043
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Laboratory Technician (Pharmaceutics)
- Alliance Institute of Advanced Pharmacy and Health Sciences
- Hyderabad 500038 India
Professor of Psychosomatic Medicine (W2)
- The University Hospital Jena, Institute of Psychosocial Medicine and Psychotherapy
- Jena Germany
UV-B damage amplified by transposons in maize
Virginia Walbot1
Abstract
While absorbing visible light energy for photosynthesis, plants are unavoidably exposed to ultraviolet radiation, which is particularly harmful at shorter wavelengths (UV-B radiation). Ozone depletion in the atmosphere means that plants receive episodic or steadily increasing doses of UV-B, which damages their photosynthetic reaction centres, crosslinks cellular proteins, and induces mutagenic DNA lesions1. Plant adaptive mechanisms of shielding and repair are therefore critical to survival — for example, somatic tissues of maize and Arabidopsis defective in phenolic sunscreen pigments2, 3 incur increased DNA damage, and mutants defective in DNA repair4, 5 are killed by UV-B.
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