A "molecular movie" which captures the secret life of DNA will screen at the Big Ideas Festival at the University of Wollongong this month.
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The director - world-renowned biophysicist Professor Antoine van Oijen - has developed powerful new microscopes to create real-time movies of cells in the process of copying their DNA to divide and multiply.
Prof van Oijen said that by studying this process of DNA replication, and observing where it went wrong, researchers could gain a better understanding of how some diseases developed and help develop new drugs.
"DNA has the genetic codes of all your cells. We are looking closely at how the proteins - the little machines in your cells - act on your DNA to read it, to repair it and to replicate it," he said.
"The use of powerful microscopes with ultrasensitive cameras enables us to make movies of these processes at the molecular level.
"This allows us to better understand how these proteins are copying DNA and how mistakes in that process can lead to many types of disease, and ultimately how these can best be treated."
Congenital conditions like fragile X syndrome and certain autism-related disorders as well as diseases like Huntington's and certain cancers that develop later in life are all caused from problems during DNA replication.
"There's a number of hereditary congenital diseases related to chromosonal destability such as developmental disorders," Prof van Oijen, from UOW's School of Chemistry, said.
"A lot of diseases are related to the repair of DNA - as sometimes DNA breaks and needs to be repaired.
"For instance, when people walk around in the sun their DNA gets damaged from the UV in the sun and needs to be repaired.
"These are the kinds of processes we're interested in."
Prof van Oijen, who came to Wollongong in January, was awarded a five-year $2.9 million Australian Research Council Australian Laureate Fellowship for DNA research in 2014.
"I've spent more than 10 years in Holland and the US undertaking research in this area," he said. "The process is slow but in the end our understanding of these processes will be important for medical applications and therapies."
He is one of 12 professors who will be sharing their research at the second UOW Big Ideas Festival on August 25, from 5pm to 9pm, at the University Hall.