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Assessment of mouse BMMNC DNA damage with a two-tailed comet assay after X-ray and carbon ion total body irradiation

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Abstract

The two-tailed comet assay (2T-comet assay) is a method for simultaneously evaluating DNA single-strand breaks (SSBs) and double-strand breaks (DSBs). In the present study, the endonuclease DNase I and hydrogen peroxide were used to induce DSBs and SSBs in bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMNCs) from mice, and the damaged DNAs were assessed with a 2T-comet assay. The results demonstrated that this method can detect and discriminate between BMMNC DNA SSBs and DSBs simultaneously. Using this method, we studied DNA damage in BMMNCs from female BALB/c mice after total body irradiation with X-rays and carbon ions. The results indicated that these two types of radiation induced serious DNA damage in BMMNCs in a dose-dependent manner. The DNA damage induced by carbon ions was more severe than that induced by X-rays at the same dose, and a high dose of carbon ion radiation was more likely to cause death in mice. The DSBs and SSBs induced by X-rays were the highest on the 3rd day post-IR. For carbon ion radiation, DSBs were the most serious on the 3rd day, while SSBs were more obvious on the 3rd day and 13th day post-IR. The ratio of DSBs/SSBs was clearly related to the different types of radiation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the operating crew of the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL) for generating the carbon ion beams used during our experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Fang Liu, Zhuan-Zi Wang, Wen-Jian Li, Wei Wei & Bing-Rong Dang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Fang Liu

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  1. Fang Liu
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  2. Zhuan-Zi Wang
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  3. Wen-Jian Li
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  4. Wei Wei
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  5. Bing-Rong Dang
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Correspondence to Zhuan-Zi Wang or Wen-Jian Li.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11575259).

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Liu, F., Wang, ZZ., Li, WJ. et al. Assessment of mouse BMMNC DNA damage with a two-tailed comet assay after X-ray and carbon ion total body irradiation. NUCL SCI TECH 29, 77 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-018-0421-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-018-0421-1

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