Sister Chromatid Exchange

Humans may experience daily exposure to genotoxic chemicals. Exposure to these genotoxic chemicals is often inevitable because they can be found in any environment, from an individual’s home to his or her workplace. The exposure to genotoxic chemicals can eventually lead to high levels of DNA damage, which has been suspected of causing cancer. The DNA damage caused by these chemicals can be measured by sister chromatid exchange. Sister chromatid exchange is a sensitive biomarker that is used to detect DNA damage due to genotoxic chemicals. In addition, sister chromatid exchange has also been helpful to minimize the exposure of humans to harmful substances. Various sources, whose purpose was to determine the genotoxicity of certain chemicals, were analyzed to evaluate the efficacy of sister chromatid exchange in identifying genotoxic chemicals and to find the correlation between sister chromatid exchange and cancer. Introduction …show more content…
Exposure to these chemicals is imminent because they can be found anywhere in the environment. As a result, the effects of exposure to genotoxic chemicals have always been of great interest due to the linkage of exposure to these chemicals and cancer. It has been proven that exposure to genotoxic chemicals damages DNA and it has also been hypothesized that prolonged exposure could even result in cancer. In order to determine whether a chemical with suspected genotoxic effects does damage DNA, the frequency of sister chromatid exchange has been used. Sister chromatid exchange is a sensitive biomarker for detecting genotoxic chemicals. Sister chromatid exchange is an S-phase DNA-repair process that symmetrically exchanges genetic material between the two identical sister chromatids [7]. When DNA is damaged, the frequency of sister chromatid exchange is higher and it can be inferred that the chemical the individual was exposed to has genotoxic