RADIATION PROTECTION ›› 2019, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (2): 150-156.

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Dose effect of high-energy neutron radiation on Caenorhabditis elegans

XU Zhao1,2, CHEN Ni1, WANG Zhigang1, LI Taosheng1   

  1. 1.Key Laboratory of Neutron transport theory and Radiation Safety, Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031;
    2.University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027
  • Received:2018-04-19 Online:2019-03-20 Published:2019-11-08

Abstract: This paper studies the dose effect of high-energy neutron radiation on Caenorhabditis elegans and discusses the relative biological effects of high-energy neutron radiation. Hermaphrodite C.elegans were randomly divided into control group and 10 irradiation dose groups of 1 047, 476, 199, 89, 18.2, 8.4, 1.83, 0.351, 0.171 and 0.087 Gy, respectively. C.elegans in each group are placed in different distance from neutron source accordingly with same irradiation time. After a single high-energy neutron whole-body irradiation, part of C.elegans were transferred into the new dish immediately for follow-up detection of spawning rate and lifespan. The other part were transferred 24 hours later for germ cell death detection. The results showed that the spawning rate presented a general decline trend with the increase of dose, especially the damage of 1.83 Gy irradiation on the number of C.elegans progeny. C.elegans with more than 89 Gy radiation stopped spawning. The lifespan of C.elegans showed a trend of decreasing with the increase of radiation dose, particularly the shortening effect of 1.83 Gy was obvious. When irradiated C.elegans with greater than 8.4 Gy, the germ cell death rised significantly with the increase of dose. The above results show that high-energy neutron radiation has a dose effect on C.elegans. There might be a stronger damage effect at low dose, which provides scientific basis for neutron low-dose radiation protection. In this paper, it is also discussed that the relative biological effect of HINEG high-energy neutron radiation is 1.25, which is calculated by comparing the neutron irradiated data with the previous γ experimental results. It showed the biological effect difference between γ and neutron irradiation. The quality factor(Q)we suggested is different from that of ICRP report. It still needs more effort to improve the reference animal database.

Key words: neutron, Caenorhabditis elegans, biological effectiveness, low-dose hyper-radiosensitivity

CLC Number: 

  • Q691