Chasing Free Radicals in Cells and Tissues

The title of my presentation prompted several to remind me of the futility of chasing free radicals given their fleeting lifetimes. Nonetheless, I have been a chaser of free radicals much of my career. Admittedly, my first 10 years of radiation research was spent studying the “aftermath” of radiation-induced free radical damage under the guidance of Joel Bedford. Joel was Eric Hall's first Ph.D. student and I was Joel's first student and all three of us were dedicated to unraveling the biology underlying the dose-rate effect, particularly for continuous low-dose-rate radiation (Fig. 1A). Joel provided me fertile ground for research and taught me the basics of experimental design and the importance of controls and the subtleties of responding to reviewers and sometimes critics. Continuous low-dose-rate radiation was found to block cells in G₂ with subsequent accumulation in mitosis resulting over a specific...