The Repairmen Within

Every day, the DNA inside each of your cells suffers tens of thousands of breaks, nicks, and chemical wounds — from sunlight, from breathing oxygen, from the ordinary stress of being alive. Left unrepaired, this damage would destroy the cell within hours. In 1974, Swedish biochemist Tomas Lindahl made a discovery that would eventually earn him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry: our cells contain an intricate repair system that works constantly, silently, and without rest, patching the genetic code before the damage can take hold.…