Graduate Courses
Professor of Chemistry, Chair, Department of Chemistry, Ph.D. 1961
(physical and polymer chemistry), M.S. 1959 (physical and polymer chemistry),
Syracuse; B.S. 1957 (physical and polymer chemistry), SUNY.
Many chemicals present in our
environment as trace contaminants in air, food, and water are known to be
mutagenic and tumorigenic. One class of these compounds, the polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), are metabolized in living cells to form highly
reactive diol epoxide intermediates, which react with and bind to cellular
DNA. The local DNA structure surrounding the binding site of these mutagenic
and carcinogenic metabolites is perturbed by the presence of these bulky
covalent addition products (adducts); these adducts interfere with the normal
replication of DNA and can give rise to mutations. One of the most fascinating
properties of these PAH metabolites is that subtle structural or steric
differences between related isomeric molecules can give rise to dramatic
differences in molecular structure-biological activity relationships.
Professor Geacintov's approach involves studies of the interactions of
different PAH diol epoxide adducts using circular and linear dichroism and
steady state and dynamic fluorescence methods. Of particular current interest
are (1) proton-coupled photoinduced electron transfer reactions and DNA
cleavage in PAH-DNA complexes and adducts, mechanisms of DNA damage by
solvated electrons and reactive oxygen species and (2) studies of the effect
of DNA base pair sequence on the conformation of the covalent addition
products. This involves synthesis of short DNA fragments of defined sequence
using a DNA synthesizer and studies of the carcinogen-modified short nucleic
acid fragments by NMR methods coupled with computer modeling and fluorescence
techniques.
Professor Geacintov received his
Ph.D. in 1961 from Syracuse University. Following postdoctoral training at
Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, he joined the physics department's Radiation
and Solid State Laboratory at New York University in 1963. He has been a
full-time faculty member of the chemistry department since 1969.
Selected Publications:
Base sequence-dependent bends in site-specific benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide-modified
oligonucleotide duplexes, with Liu, T., J. Xu, H. Tsao, B. Li, R. Xu, C. Yang,
S. Amin and M. Moriya. Chem. Res. Toxicol. 00, 000. 1996.
Interaction of the UvrABC nuclease system with a DNA duplex containing a
single stereoisomer of dG-(+)- or dG-(-)-anti-BPDE, with Zou, Y., T. M. Liu
and B. Van Houten. Biochemistry 34. 1995. 13582-13593.
The major, N2-Gua adduct of the (+)-anti-benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide is
capable of inducing G --- A and G --- C, in addition to G --- T mutations,
with Jelinsky, S. A., T. Liu and E. L. Loecher.Biochemistry 34. 1995.
13545-13553.
Affiliations
American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of
Science, American Association for Cancer Research, American Society for
Photobiology, Biophysical Society; Environmental Mutagen Society, American
Chemical Society, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Fellowships and Honors
President, American Society for Photobiology, 1994, 1995; Foreign Member,
Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994; Fellow, American Physical Society, 1978
Recent
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