The relative biological effectiveness of accelerated carbon ions with different LET for inducing mitotic crossing over and intragenic reversion of the white-ivory allele in Drosophila larvae

PURPOSE: To evaluate the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of accelerated carbon ions generated with a synchrotron for inducing mutations as a function of linear energy transfer (LET), using the loss of heterozygosity for wing-hair mutations and the reversion of the mutant white-ivory eye-colour in Drosophila melanogaster. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The measurements were made using a combined mutation assay system so that induced mutant wing-hair clones as well as revertant eye-colour clones can be detected simultaneously in the same fly. Larvae were irradiated at the age of 72+/-6 h post-oviposition with X-rays or carbon ions with LET values of 13, 60 and 95 keV/microm. RESULTS: The RBE of carbon ions for producing wing-hair mosaic spots increased with increasing LET values. The RBE for the induction of eye-colour mutants did not change with LET. The estimated RBE values were found to be in the range 2 to 6.5 for the wing-hair and nearly unity for the eye-colour mosaic spot mutations. CONCLUSIONS: RBE-LET relationships were obtained for the induction of wing-hair and eye-colour mosaic spots. These relationships suggest that more complex types of DNA damage, such as nonrejoinable strand breaks that increase with LET, may be responsible for inducing the wing-hair mutation, while more simple forms of molecular damage induce reversion in the white-ivory allele.