We previously concluded, from our analysis of the published data of other investigators, that the yield of germ-line and somatic mutations after exposure to ionizing radiation is parabolically related to the logarithm of the dose-rate at which a given dose is administered. Here we show that other data reveal a similarly parabolic relationship for other ionizing radiation-associated phenomena, namely, genetic recombination, chromosomal translocation, cell inactivation and lethality, and human leukemogenesis. Furthermore, the minima for all effects fall in a relatively narrow range of the dose-rate logarithms. Because the only mechanism common to all of these phenomena is the double-strand break (DSB) in DNA, we refer to our previous analysis of the endogenous production of DSBs, from which we concluded that Ϸ50 endogenous DSBs occur per cell cycle, although most are repaired without error. Comparison then reveals that their rate of production falls within the range of minima for the several end points pursuant to radiation-induced DSBs. We conclude that the results reflect a physiological principle whereby signals originating from induced DSBs elicit responses of maximal effectiveness when they are produced at a rate near that of the production of endogenous DSBs. We refer to this principle as ''signaling resonance.'' DNA repair ͉ mutilation ͉ repair ͉ leukemogenesis ͉ parabolic minimum T he mutagenic and carcinogenic effects of sparsely ionizing radiation (IR), such as x-rays or ␥-rays, decrease for a given dose as the dose-rate (DR) is decreased in the range of 1-100 centisieverts (cSv)͞min, a phenomenon known as the direct DR effect (DRE) and attributed to increasingly effective repair of DNA damage. On the basis of observations on locus-specific germ-line mutations in mouse spermatogonial stem cells, Lyon concluded that there could be an increase in mutation rates below this DR, with a minimum rate of damage near 0.1 cSv͞min (reviewed in ref. 1), but this conclusion was not generally accepted. Our analysis of available data for both germ-line and somatic mutations demonstrated that this inverse DRE is characteristic and that the overall DREs are parabolic functions of the logarithms of DRs over a range of approximately six logs, with minimal mutation rates per unit of dose in the range of 0.03-1.0 cSv͞min (1). This finding then raises the question of why the minimum occurs in this range, far above a common rate of background radiation on the order of 10 Ϫ7 cSv͞min.Here we analyze published data on both mutation and other radiation genetic endpoints not only for the existence of DREs, but also for clues to a mechanistic explanation. Such studies have been published for somatic recombination, for chromosomal translocations, for cell inactivation and lethality, and for human leukemogenesis. Because all of these phenomena can involve double-strand breaks (DSBs) in DNA, we compare the results of all of the DREs with those of our previous analysis of the spontaneous production of endogenous DSBs (EDSBs) (2) in an a...