Measuring DNA degradation with UV spectrophotometry

[LucaAster]

I am using a UV spectrophotometer with DNA. If there is degradation of base pairs, would I expect to see a higher or lower absorbance value?

There are more DNA strands after base pair loss, due to the strand being cut into pieces, but with fewer bases in total. So, the concentration will technically be higher? In that case, would the absorbance be higher also, or am I looking at this wrong and it only depends on the number of base pairs?

[Vexen]

Dna absorbs maximally at a wavelength at 260nm. Nucleic acids absorbs UV light because of the heterocyclic rings. A study found "the level of fragmentation did not influence the accuracy of spectrophotometric measurements of DNA concentration".

Fragmentation of DNA affects the accuracy of the DNA quantitation by the commonly used methods

Tatiana Sedlackova,^1 Gabriela Repiska,¹ Peter Celec,^1,3 Tomas Szemes,^2,3 andGabriel Minarik^1,3