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Inter-donor variability may explain some of the controversies regarding the inter-chromosomal distribution of radiation-induced aberrations.

The micronucleus assay is frequently used for purposes of biological dosimetry. Due to high interindividual variability in the spontaneous frequency of micronuclei, its sensitivity in the low dose region is poor. It has been suggested that this problem can be mitigated by selectively analyzing the frequency of those micronuclei which contain only acentric fragments. Using a pan-centromeric FISH probe we have studied the dose dependence of micronuclei with centromeres in peripheral lymphocytes of human donors. In contrast to previous publications, our approach is based on determining the relative frequency of micronuclei with and without centromeric signals. Our results confirm previous observations that in the low dose range of ionizing radiation, the micronucleus-centromere assay is more sensitive than the conventional micronucleus test.

The aim of this work was to test the cytotoxicity of newly synthesized cis-type complexes of platinum(II) and palladium(II) dichloride with methyl 3,4-diamine-2,3,4,6-tetradeoxy-alpha-L-lyxohexopyranoside, [M(C(7)H(16)N(2)O(2))Cl(2)].H(2)O, against two mouse lymphoma cell lines (L5178Y) differing in their double strand breaks and nucleotide excision repair ability. cis- Diaminedichloroplatinum (CDDP) was used as a reference compound. The toxicity of Pt(C(7)H(16)N(2)O(2))Cl(2) appeared to be similar for both cell lines: IC(50) is 8 microM for L5178Y-R cells and 12 microM for L5178Y-S cells, respectively. In contrast, the palladium complex was found to be more toxic for the LY-R cells than for the LY-S cells. The cytotoxicity of both compounds was compared with their ability to induce DNA crosslinks, as measured by the modified comet assay. CDDP caused retardation of the DNA migration induced by 2 Gy of the X-irradiation in a dose-dependent manner. The ability of Pd(C(7)H(16)N(2)O(2))Cl(2) to retard X-ray induced DNA migration was more pronounced than its platinum analogue and CDDP (see Fig. 6). However, this was not reflected in the toxicity of the compound. Such results indicate that these two compounds may cause a different type of DNA damage and/or that the DNA damage caused by the palladium(II) compound was dealt with in a different manner from that induced by the platinum(II) complex.

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