Genome-Protecting Natural Compounds and Analysis of Antigenotoxicity

Dear Colleagues,

Chemical compounds from natural sources, such as plants and microorganisms, have been studied extensively for their biological properties. Pathways of secondary metabolism from many plants and microorganisms are diverse, leading to the synthesis of a wide array of molecules with biological activities. These activities have been studied extensively, which has allowed the identification and isolation of compounds that are used in medicine, nutraceuticals, and cosmetics as antibacterial, antifungal or antitumor, among other properties. For antitumor activity, there are many compounds with mechanisms of action targeting the biological processes of tumorigenesis. Since one of the most important causes of tumorigenesis is DNA damage, compounds that protect DNA from damage have great potential in cancer prevention and are suitable to be used, for instance, in nutraceuticals and as food additives.

Analysis of antigenotoxicity is technically challenging due to the characteristics of DNA. Techniques based on antibodies against specific chemical modifications of DNA are extremely difficult to create since DNA is structurally homogeneous. On the other hand, techniques based on electrophoretic separation have low sensitivity unless isotopic labeling with radioactivity is used. Although the comet assay is well accepted among the scientific community, there are issues regarding standardization among laboratories. Therefore, new methods for DNA damage assessment would be particularly useful to improve research on DNA damage repair, antigenotoxicity, and cancer prevention.

In this Special Issue of Molecules, we will accept papers and reviews addressing these topics with special emphasis on the identification of new antigenotoxic compounds, elucidation of mechanisms of antigenotoxicity of known and new natural compounds, methods for assessment DNA damage, and improvements of known methods.

Dr. Rui Oliveira
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.