I am a high school student. After a science fair project treating poultry
projects with NaClO to kill bacteria, I became very interested in free
radical reactions. I developed an experiment where I tested the effect of
the xanthine-xanthine oxidase system on plasmid pBR322. I sucessfully
(and unknowingly) duplicated M. Rozenberg-Arska et. al.'s work published
in the Journal of General Microbiology 131,3325-3330 -- in 1985 =(
I learned that I should have gone back more than 5 years in
my journal search (access to Biosis or Medline or any such thing is
difficult for me) but I still want to continue my work. I have been
looking at the xanthine-xo system on viruses, but those protein coats are
tough stuff. (It is still interesting, though, because of the immune
system implications.)
Anyway, I have considered purifying flavanoids from various foods
and using them in my DNA system to see how they affect the time-loss of
transformation curve. However, I know little about flavanoid metabolism in
the body. Do they cross the nuclear membrane? Is there any flavanoid
interaction with DNA? Am I totally off base? Also, how would I determine
appropriate flavanoid concentrations? I realize that I would be examining
a mixture of compounds, but there has certainly been debate that Vitamin
A, C, and E are not the enterity of our dietary protectants.
I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that anyone might have.
Thank you very much.
