Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Incident Research Articles

Double-strand break motions shift radiation risk notions?

The key biologic hazard of ionizing radiation is damage to cellular DNA. Although DNA damage has long been studied in radiotherapeutic research as a means to kill cancer cells, it is also of interest to NASA's Space Radiation Program (1), which seeks to understand radiobiological risks to astronauts posed by cosmic radiation. Closer to home, DNA damage is also a focus of the US Department of Energy Low Dose Research Program, whose overall goal is to support biological research aimed at assessing risks posed by workplace, waste cleanup, and environmental radiation exposures (2). Such risks are obviously a direct public concern as well, no doubt heightened in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant incident (3). In PNAS (4), Neumaier et al. revisit common imaging-based methods used to assess cellular DNA damage from radiation exposure, and show how standard interpretation of those assays may be flawed. In the process, this study glimpses a DNA damage management dynamic that, if borne out in further study, stands to revise our understanding of damage repair in mammalian cells.