Heavy-ion effects on cellular and subcellular systems: Inactivation, chromosome aberrations and strand breaks induced by iron and nickel ions

A broad spectrum of particles and energies has been used in the last years to study the influence of the radiation quality i.e. of the physical parameters of the particle beam on the biological effectiveness. In these measurements a common structure of the functional dependence of the induction probability per particle (cross section) from the linear energy transfer is observed for different biological endpoints. Because of the relevance for space research, we present in this report our data from experiments with iron and nickel particles, in particular. Our experiments were designed to investigate the relationship between the inactivation and chromosome aberration in mammalian cells and the induction of single and double strand breaks in SV40 DNA in respect to the parameters of the track formation like LET and particle energy. (orig.)