DNA damage accumulates with age and how this damage promotes aging is of great interest. While it's well established that mutations in some DNA repair genes predispose individuals to cancer and aging, its also possible that mutations in DNA repair genes alters the capacity of individuals to recover from acute bouts of oxidative stress, ie stroke, heart attacks and other ischemic events. Thus, we are screening Base Excision Repair genes for single nucleotide polymorphisms within the BLSA sample populations as a means to begin to address this problem. Our initial screen identified three potentially interesting SNPs. Moving forward we will replicate our findings using meta-analysis on new cohorts. Results from these studies are expected to identify which BER genes play a greater role than others in aging and health outcomes.
