Radioadaptive response to the medium-mediated bystander induction of DNA strand breaks in HeLa cells

Full text: Numerous investigators have reported two cellular responses of importance at low doses that have a potential impact on the risk estimation of ionizing radiation. The radioadaptive response confers resistance to a subsequent dose by a low priming dose, while the bystander effect exaggerates the effect of small doses. The present study was conducted to examine the interaction of the radioadaptive response with the bystander effect in HeLa cells. The culture was irradiated with 0.5 to 8 Gy of 140 kVp X-rays and one hour later, the medium was taken, passed through a filter and transferred to the parallel culture of non-irradiated HeLa cells as non-targeted cells. After incubation for 30 min, the induced DNA damage was analyzed by the single cell gel-electrophoresis assay under alkaline or neutral conditions. The treatments resulted in a dose-dependent increase in tail moment under either conditions, indicating the induction of DNA single- and double-strand breaks. The clonogenic survival of non-irradiated cells was also reduced after they were cultured in the medium that was taken from irradiated cultures. Any change was not observed when the medium alone was irradiated. These results give the disputed evidence that certain genotoxic factor(s) released from irradiated cells into the culture medium can induce DNA strand breaks leading to cell death. It is also suggested that physical contact between irradiated and non-irradiated cells may not be required for the bystander effect. In adapted cells that were pre-exposed to 5 cGy of X-rays and cultured for 4 h beforehand, the yield of DNA strand breaks induced by X-rayed medium was reduced by about 50 %. The results, in conjunction with our early finding (Ikushima et al., 1996) suggest that the radioadaptive response resulting from such a low dose may diminish the bystander effect through an enhanced DNA repair function