Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of an anisothermal reacting turbulent channel flow with and without radiative source terms have been performed to study the influence of the radiative heat transfer on the optically non-homogeneous boundary layer structure. A methodology for the study of the emitting/absorbing turbulent boundary layer (TBL) is presented. Details on the coupling strategy and the parallelization techniques are exposed. An analysis of the first order statistics is then carried out. It is shown that, in the studied configuration, the global structure of the thermal boundary layer is not significantly modified by radiation. However, the radiative transfer mechanism is not negligible and contributes to the heat losses at the walls. The classical law-of-the-wall for temperature can thus be improved for RANS/LES simulations taking into account the radiative contribution.