Sun Damages DNA in Skin Cells Long After Exposure

Certain damaging reactions that can lead to melanoma-causing mutations may take hours to evolve and mostly occur after you get out of the sun

This article was published by Matt Davenport in the Scientific American science magazine the last 24^th February 2015. It is included in the medicine field. Here’s the link from the web page:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-damages-dna-in-skin-cells-long-after-exposure/

Glossary

Shield: a person or thing that defends, as from injury.

Dimer: a molecule composed of two identical, simpler molecules.

Melanoma: a malignant tumor composed of melanocytes, occurring esp in the skin, often as a result of excessive exposure to sunlight.

Tanning bed: device that emits ultraviolet radiation  to produce a cosmetic tan.

Summary

New researches have proven that radical species generated by ultraviolet light can damage DNA from our skin, and that the effect equals an irradiation caused by UV effects. Scientists are now investigating with the aim to come up with a new type if sun cream, which will protect us from the sun, even hours later from having being sunbathing.

Critical review

Personally I have to admit that this kind of articles are the ones that call my attention, due to the fact that I like summer, and of course sunbathing, and I had no idea that irradiation from the sun could cause so bad effects to my skin as melanoma’s cancer.

As I have already said in the summary, this kind of species can cause the same damage that UV rays do, but to get tanned is something we do unconsciously, every time we have a walk e.g. I firmly believe that this is something we didn’t get to know before, but now people should be conscious of the bad effects that sun can produce to our body. We can’t forget that melanoma is another kind of cancer, and that it requires the same hard treatment as any other cancer. In my opinion, most of the people believe that it is something rare and that it won’t happen to us, but you never know how your DNA is, or how your melamine could harm you.

In conclusion, I hope that scientist create this new kind of sun cream, to protect us from getting damaged even after we’ve been sunbathing. As Mr. Douglas E. Brash says: “Basically, don’t fry yourself”.

Written by Claudia Maldonado