Relative Biological Effectiveness of 6 MeV Neutrons with Respect to Cell Inactivation and Disturbances of the G1 Phase

Abstract Zolzer, F. and Streffer, C. Relative Biological Effectiveness of 6 MeV Neutrons with Respect to Cell Inactivation and Disturbances of the G1 Phase. Radiat. Res. 169, 207–213 (2008). The relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of neutrons and other types of densely ionizing radiation appears to be close to 1.0 for the induction of strand breaks, but considerably higher RBEs have been found for cellular end points such as colony-forming ability. This may be due to differences in the processing of strand breaks or to the involvement of other lesions whose yields are more dependent on radiation quality. Because cell cycle delays may be of great importance in the processing of DNA damage, we determined the RBE for disturbances of the G1 phase in four different cell types (Be11 melanoma, 4197 squamous cell carcinoma, EA14 glioma, GM6419 fibroblasts) and compared them with the RBE for cell inactivation. The method we used to determine the progress from G1 into S was as follows: Cells were serum-deprived...