The University of Otago (Christchurch) geneticist’s "final legacy" was published in Nucleic Acids Research, and showed how DNA sequences bend and twist in ways which were previously unknown.
The 47-year-old had been working in Ukraine since April last year, delivering food and medicines, and assisting elderly people to move away from the battlefront in Eastern Ukraine.
Dr Bagshaw and British colleague Christopher Parry were confirmed dead in late January, after they failed to return from an evacuation mission in the besieged Ukrainian town of Soledar in early January.
University of Otago health sciences deputy pro-vice-chancellor and anatomy professor Neil Gemmell said Dr Bagshaw’s last scientific finding was an important technical discovery, spanning the fields of genetics, biochemistry and biophysics, with the potential to benefit human health in future years.
"This paper reflects the work of someone who was exceptionally talented, able to synthesise a great deal of information from subdisciplines and disciplines that don’t always connect as directly as you might imagine, to address how DNA bends and changes, in a new and innovative way.
"This, his final body of work, is a lasting legacy to a scientist of immense promise and ability."
Prof Gemmell said Dr Bagshaw’s work showed DNA was bending in a way nobody knew about before.
"This new insight is important because DNA ‘secondary structures’ can affect how genes are turned on and off, and the way a DNA sequence is bent influences its propensity to change or ‘mutate’."
He said the paper revealed DNA sequences bend more in regions rich in the nucleotides cytosine and guanine, and that bending was particularly pronounced at the start of a sequence, the so-called 5’ end.
Dr Bagshaw also observed that where sequences were predicted to bend the most, was where changes or "mutations" in the DNA were more likely to happen.
These findings help establish how DNA functions, how it changes over time, how it folds, and how it is packaged into cells.
"Andrew’s remarkable work could lead to a better understanding of how genetic diseases arise and how they can be treated.
"It also opens up new avenues for research into the mechanics of DNA and could ultimately lead to the development of new technologies for manipulating DNA."
