Ruben Petreaca, a new faculty member in the Department who teaches at the Marion campus, was awarded an R03 grant entitled “Development of a novel genetic assay to study dna double strand breaks” Dr. Petreaca is interested in how the inaccurate repair of DNA damage contributes to carcinogenesis. Cancer cells are characterized by a high level of chromosomal instability Structural instability describes several forms of chromosomal changes including deletions, duplications, inversions and translocations. These eabberations arise when double stranded breaks in the DNA are improperly repaired. The funded work will allow Petreaca to develop an assay to better understand double strand break repair.