Cellular Monitoring of the Nuclear Factor κB Pathway for Assessment of Space Environmental Radiation

Abstract

A screening assay for the detection of NF-κB-dependent gene induction using the destabilized variant of the reporter protein enhanced green fluorescent protein (d2EGFP) is used for assessing the biological effects of accelerated heavy ions as a model of space environmental radiation conditions. The time course of d2EGFP expression and therefore of activation of NF-κB-dependent gene expression was measured after treatment with TNFA or after heavy-ion exposure using flow cytometry. The reported experiments clearly show that accelerated argon ions (95 MeV/nucleon, LET 230 keV/µm) induce the NF-κB pathway at low particle densities (1–2 particle hits per nucleus), which result in as few as 5–50 induced DSBs per cell.