Richard Burton Setlow

Interests are in the quantitative biological effects of known damages to DNA that result from ultraviolet radiation, ionizing radiation or chemical exposures, and how cells, animals and human repairs such damages. Uses backcross hybrid Xiphophorus fish as a simple model system to estimate germ cell mutations that may arise from exposure to the high energy, high atomic number cosmic ray nuclei encountered beyond low Earth orbits. He and colleagues have shown, using another fish modeI, that the UVA and visible wavelengths are the wavelengths primarily resposible for the induction of melanoma. Epidmiological studies also indicate that thes wave lengths are resposible for the induction of human malignant melanoma. Now attempting to determine the existence and nature of photoproducts in DNA that seem to arise from the intereaction of photoactivated melanin with cellular DNA that yield bulky DNA-melanin products that may be repaired by Nucleotide Excision Repair.