RADIATION SENSITIVITY & PROCESSING OF DNA DAMAGE FOLLOWING LOW DOSES OF GAMMA-RAY ALPHA PARTICLES & HZE IRRADIATION OF NORMAL DSB REPAIR DEFICIENT CELLS

Non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) predominates in the repair of DNA double strand breaks (DSB) over homologous recombination (HR). NHEJ occurs throughout the cell cycle whereas HR occurs in late S/G2 due to the requirement of a sister chromatid (Rothkamm et al, Mol Cell Biol 23 5706-15 [2003]). To date evidence obtained with DSB repair deficient cells using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis has revealed the major pathway throughout all phases of the cell cycle for processing high dose induced DSBs is NHEJ (Wang et al, Oncogene 20 2212-24 (2001); Pluth et al, Cancer Res. 61 2649-55 [2001]). These findings however were obtained at high doses when on average >> 20-30 DSBs are formed per cell. The contribution of the repair pathways (NHEJ and HR) induced in response to DNA damage during the various phases of the cell cycle may depend upon the dose (the level of initial DSBs) especially since low levels of DSBs are induced at low dose. To date, low dose studies using NHEJ and HR deficient mutants have not been carried out to address this important question with radiations of different quality. The work presented here leads us to suggest that HR plays a relatively minor role in the repair of radiation-induced prompt DSBs. SSBs lead to the induction of DSBs which are associated specifically with S-phase cells consistent with the idea that they are formed at stalled replication forks in which HR plays a major role in repair. That DNA-PKcs is in some way involved in the repair of the precursors to replication-induced DSB remains an open question. Persistent non-DSB oxidative damage also leads to an increase in RAD51 positive DSBs. Both simple and complex non-DSB DNA damage may therefore contribute to indirect DSBs induced by ionising radiation at replication forks