Survival, chromosome abnormalities, and recovery in heavy-ion and x-irradiated mammalian cells.

The dose response of mammalian cells to ionizing radiation is dependent among other things on the stopping power (dE/dx), or total linear energy transfer (LETo), of the radiation used, as has been shown by a number of recent investigations (1-10). The object of much of this work has been to gain information about the radiosensitive sites involved in the response mechanism as the spatial distribution of the radiation energy deposition is altered. The effect studied in most of these experiments was the survival of colony-forming ability. In this paper are summarized the results of our studies on survival of colony-forming ability (2, 3) and chromosome damage(4) following exposure to radiations of different LEToo ,along with preliminary data on the recovery of cells between fractionated doses. More detailed papers on our studies of survival and chromosome damage will be found elsewhere.2