• Question: Do burns affect your DNA?

    Asked by EllaE on 17 Nov 2021.
    • Photo: Magdalena Sutcliffe

      Magdalena Sutcliffe answered on 17 Nov 2021:

      I don’t think that burns affect your DNA. However, either excess heat or radiation (for example UV radiation) can lead to DNA damage.

    • Photo: Thomas Nicol

      Thomas Nicol answered on 17 Nov 2021:

      That’s a good question and one I don’t have the answer to. However, burns destroy cells so the DNA in those cells will be destroyed too. However, any undamaged cells probably don’t experience any damage to their DNA. although sun burn is a little different as it isn’t a burn so much as radiation damage to the cells of your skin.

    • Photo: Craig Anderson

      Craig Anderson answered on 17 Nov 2021:

      If DNA in a cell is directly damaged from heat or fire, then it’s probable that that cell will die.

      Certain types of radiation damage DNA and if the dose is really high can cause a burn. UV radiation causes certain bits of DNA to form unusual bonds, but most of this damage is fixed before cells divide. Ionising radiation from radioactive materials, can also cause burns but tends to impact DNA by causing the strands to break! If this isn’t fixed then the cell will die, though sometimes repairs can lead to major rearrangements of the genome.

    • Photo: Joaquin de Navascues

      Joaquin de Navascues answered on 17 Nov 2021:

      Heat can damage DNA molecules in various ways, but you need to keep in mind that “your DNA” is stored in every cell of your body, so when you burn, the cells in that area will die (before their DNA is affected), but the rest of your body will have cells with your DNA in them that will be perfectly fine.

      It may be, however, that the burn stresses nearby surviving cells that may suffer DNA damage as a result, but that will only happen in those cells, not your whole DNA.

    • Photo: Madeleine Heep

      Madeleine Heep answered on 19 Nov 2021:

      That is a great question that I never really thought about!

      If you think about cooking meat, you probably noticed that the texture changes from raw to cooked meat. This is because the proteins in the meat denaturate. Cells that are cooked like the chicken on your plate, are definitely dead. Now, the DNA in your meat is more stable than protein, so it might still be intact. However, any cell being cooked will be dead.

      Luckily, in your body every cell has DNA. So even if you burn your finger and some cells will die, you do have enough cells with healthy DNA left to heal your wound.

Comments