P-2b-80 1 Dose Rate Effectiveness in Radiation-induced Teratogenesis in Mice

To investigate the role of p53 gene in tissue repair of teratogenic injury, we compared incidence of radiation-induced malformations in homozygous p53(-/-) mice, heterozygous p53(+/-) mice and wild-type p53(+/+) mice. After X-irradiation with 2 Gy at high dose rate on 9.5 days of gestation, p53(-/-) mice showed higher incidences of anomalies and higher resistance to prenatal deaths than p53(+/+) mice. This reciprocal relationship of radiosensitivity to anomalies and deaths supports the notion that embryos or fetuses have a p53-dependent 'guardian ' that aborts cells bearing radiation-induced teratogenic DNA damage. In fact, after X-irradiation, the number of apoptotic cells was greatly increased in p53(+/+) fetuses but not in p53(-/-) fetuses. The same dose of γ-ray exposure at low dose rate on 9.5-10.5 day of gestation produced significant reduction of radiation-induced malformation in p53(+/+) and p53(+/-) mice, remained teratogenic for p53(-/-) mice. These results suggest that complete elimination of teratogenic damage from irradiated tissues requires the concerted cooperation of two mechanisms; proficient DNA repair and the p53-dependent apoptotic tissue repair. When concerted DNA repair and apoptosis functions efficiently, there is a threshold dose-rate for radiation-induced malformations