2021 Volume 13 Issue 1 Pages 32-36
Tritiated water is generated under the decommissioning process of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan (METI) and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) are considering releasing tritium into the ocean. In addition, tritium is planning to use as fuel in fusion power plants, which is expected as a future power generation technology. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of tritium on biomolecules in living organisms including human in detail. We aim to elucidate the mechanism of DNA damage due to the radioactive decay effect that occurs when light hydrogen in human DNA is replaced with tritium, using molecular dynamics (MD) methods. To understand the decay effect on DNA, first, it is necessary to evaluate the replaceability of light hydrogen to tritium for each hydrogen in DNA. In this study, to evaluate the degree of replaceability of the backbone hydrogen atoms in telomeric DNA of human, solvent-accessible surface area (SASA) is calculated for the data obtained by MD simulation. As a result, it is found that the SASA of H5 hydrogen is large in the hydrogen atoms in the backbone.
