Heavy ion-induced DNA double-strand breaks with yeast as a model system

Abstract
Cells of diploid yeast,Saccharomyces cerevisiae, were exposed to a variety of energetic heavy ions (provided by the UNILAC facility at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI),241Amα-particles and 80-keV x-rays after which they were assessed for DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) using either the neutral sedimentation or the pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) technique. Both yielded comparable results. The DSB production cross-sections are compared with inactivation studies performed for the same cells under identical conditions. The measurements show that with lighter ions DSB induction cross-sections increase with linear energy transfer (LET), but the situation is less clear with the heavier ions. A close parallelism was found between DSB induction and cell inactivation in these yeast cells.

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