A Repair Fixation Model Based on Classical Enzyme Kinetics

Abstract

Since radiation induced damage may be repaired by cells any model attempting to describe cellular radiative action in a quantitative way has this fact take into account. There is a considerable number of suggestions in the literature (see Weber, this volume). Many of them have in common that damage and repair are treated differently. It is, e.g., often assumed that permanent lesions are formed by pairwiseinteraction of sublesions. It is the aim of the present paper to show that dose response curve shapes can be described with a minimum of restricting assumptions and that it is not necessary to postulate different kinetics for repair and fixation. Interestingly, the mathematical treatment leads to equations which are formally identical to the LPL-model of Curtis (1986) although the underlying ideas are quite different. This demonstrates that further independent tests are necessary to test the validity of any model.