Kumar and Sevilla publish major review

While most scientific papers report new results, another important way scientists communicate is through review articles. With so many papers published nowadays, a review article can summarize recent work and provide perspective. Distinguished Professor and CBR member Michael Sevilla and Research Associate Anil Kumar, of the Department of Chemistry, published a major review titled Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer in DNA on Formation of Radiation-Produced Ion Radicals in the December 2010 issue of Chemical Reviews (Volume 110, Pages 7002-7023) that is dedicated entirely to Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer. Reviews often contain many references, and Kumar and Sevilla’s is no exception: they cite 275 papers. Another surprising feature of the review is that it already has been cited four times just one month after the special issue was published. Their review concludes with “clearly, PCET [proton-coupled electron transfer] events initiated by radiation damage to DNA have provided and will continue to provide a fertile ground for research seeking to understand the initial complex processes which are critical to understanding the ultimate biological effects of radiation.”

Chemical Reviews publish short biographies of authors, reproduced below.

Michael D. Sevilla is currently Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Oakland University. He received a B.S. in chemistry from San Jose State College and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Washington in 1967. After a postdoctoral year at the University of Washington and two years with Atomics International Corp., he joined Oakland University in 1970. He has been Chair of the Chemistry Department at Oakland University, 1997-2003, Associate Editor of Radiation Research, 2003-2006, and President of the Radiation Research Society, 2005-2006. Professor Sevilla is a well-known radiation chemist and has focused his research on free radical reactions induced by radiation damage to DNA and other biomolecules employing experimental approaches such as electron spin resonance spectroscopy and theoretical approaches such as density functional theory. Recent efforts in collaboration with Dr. Kumar have elucidated the role of excited states of DNA ion radicals in the formation of DNA damage. He is a member of the AAAS, the ACS, and the Radiation Research Society.

Anil Kumar received his Ph.D. in physics from the Department of Physics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. His Ph.D. dissertation investigated the structure, properties, and specific molecular interactions of DNA and its constituents using quantum chemical methods. He was awarded a position as Pool Scientist from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India, in 1997. Later he did his postdoctoral work at the Department of Chemistry, University of Hannover, Germany. He was a visiting scientist at the Department of Molecular Biophysics, German Cancer Research Institute, DKFZ, Heidelberg, Germany. Presently, he is working as a research associate in the group of Prof. M. D. Sevilla at the Department of Chemistry, Oakland University. His research interests are to explore the mechanism of DNA damage, DNA ion radical formation, the charge transfer process, and the involvement of excited states for producing DNA strand breaks employing computational chemistry approaches.

Sevilla’s laboratory is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.