Damage to genes (mutations)

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Written by

Asokendu Mozumder

Faculty Fellow, Radiation Laboratory and Department of Chemistry, University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Coauthor of Advances in Radiation Chemistry.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

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Gene mutations resulting from radiation-induced damage to DNA have been produced experimentally in many types of organisms. In general, the frequency of a given mutation increases in proportion to the dose of radiation in the low-to-intermediate dose range. At higher doses, however, the frequency of mutations induced by a given dose may be dependent on the rate at which the dose is accumulated, tending to be lower if the dose is accumulated over a long period of time.

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In human white blood cells (lymphocytes), as in mouse spermatogonia and oocytes, the frequency of radiation-induced mutations approximates 1 mutation per 100,000 cells per genetic locus per Sv. This rate of increase is not large enough to detect with existing methodology in the children of the atomic-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, owing to their limited numbers and the comparatively small average dose of radiation received by their parents. Accordingly, it is not surprising that heritable effects of irradiation have not been observable thus far in this population or in any other irradiated human population, in spite of exhaustive efforts to detect them.

The observed proportionality between the frequency of induced mutations and the radiation dose has important health implications for the human population, since it implies that even a small dose of radiation given to a large number of individuals may introduce mutant genes into the population, provided that the individuals are below reproductive age at the time of irradiation. The effect on a population of a rise in its mutation rate depends, however, on the role played by mutation in determining the characteristics of the population. Although deleterious genes enter the population through mutations, they tend to be eliminated because they reduce the fitness of their carriers. Thus, a genetic equilibrium is reached at the point where the entry of deleterious genes into the population through mutation is counterbalanced by their loss through reduction in fitness. At the point of equilibrium, an increase of the mutation rate by a given percentage causes a proportionate increase in the gene-handicapped fraction in the population. The full increase is not manifested immediately, however, but only when genetic equilibrium is again established, which requires several generations.

The capacity of radiation to increase the frequency of mutations is often expressed in terms of the mutation-rate doubling dose, which is the dose that induces as large an additional rate of mutations as that which occurs spontaneously in each generation. The more sensitive the genes are to radiation, the lower is the doubling dose. The doubling dose for high-intensity exposure in several different organisms has been found experimentally to lie between about 0.3 and 1.5 Gy. For seven specific genes in the mouse, the doubling dose of gamma radiation for spermatogonia is about 0.3 Gy for high-intensity exposure and about 1.0 Gy for low-intensity exposure. Little is known about the doubling dose for human genes, but most geneticists assume that it is about the same as the doubling dose for those of mice. Studies of the children of atomic-bomb survivors are consistent with this view, as noted above.

From the results of experiments with mice and other laboratory animals, the dose required to double the human mutation rate is estimated to lie in the range of 0.2–2.5 Sv, implying that less than 1 percent of all genetically related diseases in the human population is attributable to natural background irradiation. Although natural background irradiation therefore appears to make only a relatively small contribution to the overall burden of genetic illness in the world’s population, millions of individuals may be thus affected in each generation.

Notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of mutations are decidedly harmful, those induced by irradiation in seeds are of interest to horticulturists as a means of producing new and improved varieties of plants. Mutations produced in this manner can affect such properties of the plant as early ripening and resistance to disease, with the result that economically important varieties of a number of species have been produced by irradiation. In their effects on plants, fast neutrons and heavy particles have been found to be up to about 100 times more mutagenic than X rays. Radioactive elements taken up by plants also can be strongly mutagenic. In the choice of a suitable dose for the production of mutations, a compromise has to be made between the mutagenic effects and damaging effects of the radiation. As the number of mutations increases, so also does the extent of damage to the plants. In the irradiation of dry seeds by X rays, a dose of 10 to 20 Gy is usually given.

By breaking both strands of the DNA molecule, radiation also can break the chromosome fibre and interfere with the normal segregation of duplicate sets of chromosomes to daughter cells at the time of cell division, thereby altering the structure and number of chromosomes in the cell. Chromosomal changes of this kind may cause the affected cell to die when it attempts to divide, or they may alter its properties in various other ways.

Chromosome breaks often heal spontaneously, but a break that fails to heal may cause the loss of an essential part of the gene complement; this loss of genetic material is called gene deletion. A germ cell thus affected may be capable of taking part in the fertilization process, but the resulting zygote may be incapable of full development and may therefore die in an embryonic state.

When adjoining chromosome fibres in the same nucleus are broken, the broken ends may join together in such a way that the sequence of genes on the chromosomes is changed. For example, one of the broken ends of chromosome A may join onto a broken end of chromosome B, and vice versa in a process termed translocation. A germ cell carrying such a chromosome structural change may be capable of producing a zygote that can develop into an adult individual, but the germ cells produced by the resulting individual may include many that lack the normal chromosome complement and so yield zygotes that are incapable of full development; an individual affected in this way is termed semisterile. Because the number of his descendants is correspondingly lower than normal, such chromosome structural changes tend to die out in successive generations.

As would be expected from target theory considerations, X rays and gamma rays given at high doses and high dose rates induce more two-break chromosome aberrations per unit dose than are produced at low doses and low dose rates. With densely ionizing radiation, by comparison, the yield of two-break aberrations for a given dose is higher than with sparsely ionizing radiation and is proportional to the dose irrespective of the dose rate. From these comparative dose-response relationships, it is inferred that a single X-ray track rarely deposits enough energy at any one point to break two adjoining chromosomes simultaneously, whereas the two-break aberrations that are induced by high-LET irradiation result preponderantly from single particle tracks.

In irradiated human lymphocytes, the frequency of chromosome aberrations varies so predictably with the dose of radiation that it is used as a crude biologic dosimeter of exposure in radiation workers and other exposed persons. What effect, if any, an increase in the frequency of chromosome aberrations may have on the health of an affected individual is uncertain. Only a small percentage of all chromosome aberrations is attributable to natural background radiation; the majority result from other causes, including certain viruses, chemicals, and drugs.