Figure 1.

Examples of the evolution in hypotheses and approaches taken to decipher the mechanisms underlying normal tissue radiation responses. (A) A paradigm of tissue compartments communicating through unspecified channels (Rubin et al. 1998); (B) An holistic overview of radiation disrupting a tissue’s homeostatic balance, resulting in autocrine and paracrine expression of chemokines and cytokines (McBride et al. 2004); (C) A simplified overview of the potential integration of -omics data at the DNA (genes, red), RNA (transcripts, dark blue) and protein (red) levels, as well as the regulation (red broken lines) at the transcription (yellow) miRNA (orange) and epigenetic (green) levels (modified from Unger 2014.).