<title>Biological dosimetry after H<formula><inf><roman>2</roman></inf></formula>O<formula><inf><roman>2</roman></inf></formula>/L-histidine treatment</title>

Abstract

In biological dosimetry after radiation or chemical exposure, it has been well established to estimate exposure doses from the relative rate of aberrant chromosomes, especially dicentric chromosomes in a given number of cells. For this purpose, dose-efficiency curves depending on laboratory parameters (e.g. preparation technique, analysis procedure etc.) have to be measured under standard conditions. For statistical reasons, a high number of chromosomes or cells, respectively, has to be evaluated. For a Chinese hamster cell line (CO60) as a typical model system in mutation research, a dose efficiency relation after H<SUB>2</SUB>O<SUB>2</SUB>/L-histidine treatment of the cells was determined using the Heidelberg slit-scan flow fluorometer. This technique has the advantage that several thousand chromosomes can be automatically analyzed in a very short time. As expected, for low doses of H<SUB>2</SUB>O<SUB>2</SUB>/L-histidine exposure, a nearly linear dependence of the relative number of dicentric chromosomes to the concentration of H<SUB>2</SUB>O<SUB>2</SUB> was obtained. In order to correlate the relative number of dicentric chromosomes to the relative number of double strand breaks, the cells were analyzed by the technique of the neutral comet assay. The dose dependent `tail moment' obtained from the comet assay also showed a linear behavior. This confirmed the results obtained by slit-scan flow fluorometry. Furthermore, the linear dependence of the dose efficiency curve was well compatible to results obtained by visual counting by means of a fluorescence microscope. In this case chromosome 1 of the Chinese hamster cell line DON was specifically labelled by fluorescence in situ hybridization.