Abstract
The genetic effects of tritiated water (3H20) on Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells in suspension were investigated at two concentrations (31 and 62 mCi/ml) by measuring the mitotic gene conversion at trp 5. The frequency of convertants increased linearly with the length of time for which cells were suspended in tritiated water. The frequency increase per unit treatment time indicated a significant dependence upon the concentration of 3H20. It was also found that the efficiency of the induction by 3H20 treatment was two to three times higher than that by --ray irradiation ('37Cs), when based on the calculated B-particle dose. The investigation of the mutagenic effects of tritiated water (3H20) has two aspects. One is to know whether or not damage produced by tritium decay is fully accounted for by the P-particle dose. The second is to provide fundamental information on the biological effects of tritium, one of the waste products from nuclear power plants. For the former purpose 3H20 seems ideal since the intracellular distribution can be assumed to be homogeneous. Yeast cells were used in the present experiments. The yeast cell has a sufficiently large dimension (diameter, 5 ,m) in comparison with the range of tritium P-particles to make the dose calculation simpler than for organisms of a size comparable with the range. Also, in contrast to Escherichia coli, yeast cells can tolerate suspension in distilled water for several days. Since they do not grow under these conditions, they may be treated with 3H20 without the necessity for the freezing procedures often employed to get a sufficient number of disintegrations within one cell generation. Moreover, the eukaryotic yeast cells provide a bridge between the simple prokaryotic systems and the more complex mammalian cells, for which information on the mutagenic action of tritium decay from 3H20 is most needed. In this paper, we report on the mutagenic effects of 3H20 on Saccharomyces cells suspended in water at 2 to 6?C. The efficiency of the induction of genetic changes relative to that of y radiation will also be discussed. 139
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