Folate restriction as a potential interventional means to decrease cellular oxidative stress and enhance repair activity

Understanding the impact that folate restriction has on repair pathways in the cell is a fundamental process that can help to elucidate the mechanism, or route by which carcinogenesis is promoted. For the past 20 years, much emphasis has been illuminated on the relationship between folate restriction and the result of many diseases, like cancer. Nonetheless, folate restriction and its health benefits is a particularly primitive research topic that if investigated further can be employed as an interventional means to decrease oxidative stress, and also increase expression of repair genes in the cell. Using Real-Time PCR analysis for measuring mRNA (transcriptional) levels of specific oxidative stress and BER pathway genes in mice cells exposed to either a long term or short term folate diet prior to treatment with DMH (carcinogen). Thus, long term folate restriction promotes heightened activity of critical genes involved in base excision repair (BER) pathway, and regulation of oxidative damage.