Time-lapse microscopy has captured severed DNA strands in the act of pairing up with partners from the wrong chromosomes – a process with links to cancer.
When DNA breaks across both strands of the double helix, it is cut into two pieces that drift apart. To see what ensues, the team tagged the break points on the DNA with fluorescent proteins that made them visible. “Up until recently there was simply no technology to do this at the required image resolution,” says Tom Misteli, at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
Read the full, original story here: First images of DNA mix-ups linked to cancer