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(not the parent poster)

I don't know for sure, but I'm setting up an experiment this year where I irradiate cells with UV and try to use 5G radiation to jam the BER mechanism, which is one of the DNA error correcting systems. BER uses the charge state of DNA (https://www.pnas.org/content/100/22/12543) to help find thymine dimers, and 5G radiation is in just about the right frequency range to excite nuclear DNA and induce a current in DNA. I would be looking for a higher rate of mutation in the UV + 5G case over UV control, and no effect in 5G / control without UV.

What is interesting about this experiment is that 1) it's easy. 2) you would never detect this using normal procedures to assess mutagenicity, because normal techniques assume that the harm comes from direct mutation effect of the radiation; in this case the harm (if it is there) would come as a secondary effect, by inhibitng proper repair in the presence of a previous insult. Moreover, typical lab experiments (rightly) attempt to reduce outside effects (especially mutagens), so it's less likely it would have been discovered by accident.

Incidentally I'm sick and tired of people saying "it's non-ionizing and therefore not dangerous". This is a very reductive statement that belies a complete lack of understanding of biophysical chemistry.




How can I follow your work?


twitter under same handle as hn. I am slowly ramping engagement on this, you'll have to sift through posts about elixir


Which GHz frequency?




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