Final Technical Report for the grant entitled "Genetic Factors Affecting Susceptibility to Low-Dose Radiation"

The goal of this proposal was to test the hypothesis that mice heterozygous for the Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome (NBS1) gene are genetically susceptible to low doses of ionizing radiation. The rationale for this is that patients with NBS are radiation sensitive, because of defects in cellular responses to radiation induced genetic damage and haploinsufficiency at this genetic locus provides the potential for genetic susceptibility to low doses of ionizing radiation. Wild type and heterozygous NBS1 mice were irradiated and followed over their lifetime for radiation induced genomic instability, carcinogenesis and non-specific life shortening. No differences in cytogenetic damage, cancer induction or life span were observed between the hypomorphic mice indicating that genetic imbalance at the NBS1 loci does not modulate low dose radiation sensitivity