Reader TTS

Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Sunlight can cause cancer-related DNA damage hours after light exposure, owing to a skin pigment that was largely thought to be protective.

Douglas Brash at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and his team studied how the pigment melanin in mouse skin cells responds to ultraviolet (UV) light. They found

that UVA radiation, the main type of UV light that comes from the Sun and from tanning beds, creates melanin by-products that damage DNA, generating DNA derivatives called cyclobutane

pyrimidine dimers (CPDs) for up to three hours after light exposure. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your institution

Subscribe to this journal Receive 51 print issues and online access $199.00 per year only $3.90 per issue Learn more Buy this article * Purchase on SpringerLink * Instant access to full

article PDF Buy now Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout ADDITIONAL ACCESS OPTIONS: * Log in * Learn about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs *

Contact customer support RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Sunlight damages DNA in the dark. _Nature_ 518, 459 (2015).

https://doi.org/10.1038/518459b Download citation * Published: 25 February 2015 * Issue Date: 26 February 2015 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/518459b SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the

following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Copy to clipboard Provided by the Springer

Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative