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. 1976 Mar;73(3):809–812. doi: 10.1073/pnas.73.3.809

DNA strand breaks, repair, and survival in x-irradiated mammalian cells.

D L Dugle, C J Gillespie, J D Chapman
PMCID: PMC336008  PMID: 1062792

Abstract

The yields of unrepairable single-and double-strand breaks in the DNA of x-irradiated Chinese hamster cells were measured by low-speed neutral and alkaline sucrose density gradient sedimentation in order to investigate the relation between these lesions and reproductive death. After maximal single-strand remoining, at all doses, the number of residual single-strand breaks was twice the number of residual double-strand breaks. Both double-strand and unrepairable single-strand breaks were proportional to the square of absorbed dose, in the range 10-50 krad. No rejoining of double-strand breaks was observed. These observations suggest that, in mammalian cells, most double-strand breaks are not repairable, while all single-strand breaks are repaired except those that are sufficiently close on complementary strands to constitute double-strand breaks. Comparison with cell survival measurements at much lower doses suggests that loss of reproductive capacity corresponds to induction of approximately one double-strand break.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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