Fast Neutron Radiation Effects on Bacillus Subtili

To examine the sterilizing effect and mechanism of neutron radiation, Bacillus subtilis var. niger. strain (ATCC 9372) spores were irradiated with the fast neutron from the Chinese fast burst reactor II(CFBR-II). The plate-count results indicated that the D10 value was 384.6 Gy with a neutron radiation dose rate of 7.4 Gy/min. The rudimental catalase activity of the spores declined obviously with the increase in the radiation dose. Meanwhile, under the scanning electron microscope, no visible influence of the neutron radiation on the spore configuration was detected even if the dose was increased to 4 kGy. The content and distribution of DNA double-strand breaks induced by neutron radiation at different doses were measured and quantified by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Further analysis of the DNA release percentage (PR), the DNA breakage level (L), and the average molecular weight, indicated that DNA fragments were obviously distributed around the 5 kb regions at different radiation doses, which suggests that some points in the DNA molecule were sensitive to neutron radiation. Both PR and L varied regularly to some extent with the increase in radiation dose. Thus neutron radiation has a high sterilization power, and can induce falling enzyme activity and DNA breakage in Bacillus subtilis spores