{"id":562661,"date":"2025-10-22T15:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T18:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=562661"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:26:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T18:26:25","slug":"sunburn-damages-rna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/sunburn-damages-rna\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunburn damages RNA"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_562619\" style=\"max-width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright vertical\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-562619 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-sol-queimadura-2025-03-800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"669\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-sol-queimadura-2025-03-800.jpg 800w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-sol-queimadura-2025-03-800-250x209.jpg 250w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-sol-queimadura-2025-03-800-700x585.jpg 700w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-sol-queimadura-2025-03-800-120x100.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">Joel Carillet\u2009\/\u2009Getty Images<\/span>To protect your skin, use sunscreen<span class=\"media-credits\">Joel Carillet\u2009\/\u2009Getty Images<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>After a day of sunbathing on the beach without sunscreen, a person\u2019s skin is likely to become red and inflamed, often painful, as the surface cells die and fall off in response to damage traditionally associated with DNA. Late last year, it was discovered that this may not be the whole truth, although ultraviolet radiation from the Sun does indeed damage DNA. It is actually the RNA molecule, not DNA, that triggers a reaction to excessive exposure to ultraviolet B radiation. Scientists from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark found that damage to a type of RNA known as messenger RNA (mRNA) triggers a response orchestrated by a protein called ZAK-alpha, which alerts the immune system, leading to inflammation and pain. \u201cIn mice exposed to ultraviolet [UV] radiation, we found responses such as inflammation and cell death, but when we removed the ZAK gene, these responses disappeared, which means that ZAK plays a key role in the skin&#8217;s response to UV-induced damage,\u201d said Simon Bekker-Jensen, one of the study\u2019s authors, in a university statement. What remains unchanged is that sunscreen is essential (<em>Molecular Cell<\/em>, December 19; <em>ScienceAlert<\/em>, January 23).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunburn damages RNA, not just DNA","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1651],"tags":[237,260],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-562661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","tag-genetics","tag-public-health"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562662,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562661\/revisions\/562662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562661"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=562661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}