A study has revealed how blue light damages cellular proteins by bypassing antioxidant systems.

A research team led by Professors Min Doo-young, Kwon Tae-hyeok, and Min Seung-gyu from the Department of Chemistry at UNIST (President Jong-rae Park) announced on the 6th that they have discovered a new pathway by which cellular proteins are damaged by blue light.

Blue light is light emitted from sunlight, LED-based display devices, and indoor lighting. It is a high-energy visible light that cannot be properly blocked by general UV blockers and has the characteristic of passing through the cornea and lens of the eye to reach the retina.

It is known that blue light reaching the body can cause oxidation damage to cell proteins, which can harm skin and eye health. When oxygen dissolved in the body absorbs blue light and changes into highly reactive oxygen, this oxygen moves between the proteins of the cell and causes oxidation damage to the protein surface. The antioxidant system in the cell can neutralize this oxygen and reduce protein damage.

The protein damage pathway discovered by the research team occurs inside proteins that are beyond the reach of antioxidant systems. This is a pathway where oxygen trapped inside a protein interacts with a specific amino acid, absorbs the energy of blue light, and is transformed into reactive oxygen. The generated reactive oxygen moves around inside the protein and ultimately causes protein damage.

The research team discovered this pathway by taking inspiration from the structure of proteins. Proteins are complexly folded amino acid chains, and there are countless spaces between them, which can capture small molecules. They used various experimental, computational, statistical, and bioinformatics approaches to verify this from various angles, and named this protein damage pathway the 'oxygen-confined photooxidation pathway.'

Professor Min Doo-young said, “We have discovered a new protein damage pathway that is fundamentally different from the general protein damage pathway, and we have confirmed that it can universally affect all proteins in the cell.”

Professor Min continued, “The newly discovered protein damage pathway could be the hidden principle behind the aging of skin and eye tissue or the induction of diseases caused by blue light.”

The research results were published in the international academic journal Nature Communications on the 30th of last month. The research was conducted with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology.