Induction of DNA doublestrand-breaks along the tracks of low energy protons

摘要

With the setup presented here, it is possible to investigate the effects of densely ionising protons in the range of their bragg peak and the repair of the induced concentrated DNA damage. Primary human fibroblasts were irradiated with low energy protons at the Erlangen Tandem Van-de-Graaff accelerator. The DNA damage along the paths of the protons in the cell nuclei was visualised by immunostaining and fluorescence microscopy. The marker protein for the detection of doublestrand breaks was the phosphorylated histon y-H2AX. Clearly identifiable particle tracks could be induced, allowing further investigations of the repair kinetics. While other experiments in this field mostly make use of heavy ions, this works allows the comparison of the results with the effects of densely ionising protons.