Genomic Instability Induced by Low Dose Irradiation

The goal of this project was to determine if genomic instability could be initiated by poorly repaired DNA damage induced by low doses of ionizing radiation leading to a mutator phenotype. Human cells were irradiated, then transfected with an unirradiated reporter gene at various times AFTER exposure. The vector carried an inactive GFP gene that fluoresced when the gene was activated by a delayed mutation. Fluorescent cells were measured in the interval of 50 hours to four days after transfection. The results showed that delayed mutations occurred in these cells after exposure to relatively low doses (0.3-1.0 Gy) of low or high ionizing radiation, as well as after treatment with hyrodgen peroxide (30-100 micromolar). The occurrence was both dose and time dependent, often decreasing at higher doses and later times. No marked difference was observed between the response of mis-match repair-proficient and -deficient cell lines. Although the results were quite reproducible within single experiments, difficulties were observed from experiment to experiment. Different reagents and assays were tested, but no improvement resulted. We concluded that this method is not sufficiently robust or consisent to be useful in the assay of the induction of genomic instability by low doses of radiation, at least in these cell lines under our conditions