A single low dose of Fe ions can cause long-term biological responses in NL20 human bronchial epithelial cells.

A single low dose of Fe ions can cause long-term biological responses in NL20 human bronchial epithelial cells. Radiat Environ Biophys. 2017 Nov 10;: Authors: Cao Q, Liu W, Wang J, Cao J, Yang H Abstract Space radiation cancer risk may be a potential obstacle for long-duration spaceflight. Among all types of cancer space radiation may induce, lung cancer has been estimated to be the largest potential risk. Although previous animal study has shown that Fe ions, the most important contributor to the total dose equivalent of space radiation, induced a higher incidence of lung tumorigenesis per dose than X-rays, the underlying mechanisms at cellular level remained unclear. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated long-term biological changes in NL20 human bronchial epithelial cells after exposure to Fe ion or X-ray irradiation. We found that compared with sham control, the progeny of NL20 cells irradiated with 0.1 Gy of Fe ions showed slightly increased micronucleus formation, significantly decreased cell proliferation, disturbed cell cycle distribution, and obviously elevated intracellular ROS levels accompanied by reduced SOD1 and SOD2 expression, but the progeny of NL20 cells irradiated with 0.9 Gy of X-rays did not show any significant changes. More importantly, Fe ion exposure caused much greater soft-agar colony formation than X-rays did in the progeny of irradiated NL20 cells, clearly suggesting higher cell transformatio...
Source: Radiation and Environmental Biophysics - Category: Physics Authors: Tags: Radiat Environ Biophys Source Type: research