The Broken Strand

Every cell in your body is hit by thousands of DNA lesions each day, yet you are not falling apart. How does life persist on a molecule this fragile? The answer lies in a hidden maintenance crew working around the clock, and its success or failure shapes cancer, aging, and the future of medicine. If you have ever wondered what a BRCA mutation really means or why we grow old, this book is for you.

You will meet the chemist who doubted that DNA could last, the researcher who reconstructed the cell's cut-and-patch machinery from sunburn, and the scientists who tracked breast cancer genes through grieving families. Discover how mismatch repair spots a typo in billions of letters, why a single broken chromosome can't wait, and how drugs such as PARP inhibitors turn a tumor's weakness against it. Along the way, learn whether accumulated damage truly explains aging.

Written in the spirit of the Very Short Introductions, this book is concise, clear, and free of jargon. It follows the three pathways honored with the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry as a human story of curiosity and discovery, giving general readers a rigorous, engaging view of one of biology's most vital processes.