A recent paper published in Nature Communications titled “Contributing factors to the oxidation-induced mutational landscape in human cells” co-authored by cellular, molecular, and biomedical sciences Ph.D. candidate Cameron Cordero and his advisor, Steven Roberts, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, and colleagues has been included on the journal’s Editors’ Highlights page in the cancer category. Cordero’s primary research interest is computational analysis of DNA damage and repair in cancer.

The work in Cordero’s paper that was highlighted by Nature Communications as one of the best cancer biology publications in the journal for 2024, characterizes factors that influence where mutations caused by oxidants occur. Overall, this paper provides important information in how mutations accumulate to cause gastrointestinal cancers. It identified a new type of mutation associated with oxidative damage as well as provided evidence that non-canonical DNA repair mechanisms can remove oxidative DNA damage.

Cordero also won the Larry Oberley Young Investigator Award at the 2024 Society for Redox Biology and Medicine Annual Conference for his oral presentation of his work in this paper. The Larry Oberley Young Investigator Award is given to one of the top two presentations at the conference.

Read full story about this research by Cordero and Roberts et al.

Research like this has contributed to the University of Vermont’s designation by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as an R1 institution, placing it in the top tier of research universities in the U.S.