Use of the tricolor FISH-painting method of chromosomes for the analysis of radiation-induced chromosomal aberrations: a pilot study

Purpose: to compare the frequency of radiation-induced translocations detected by three-color FISH-method using different sets of DNA probes. Material and Methods. The material for the cytogenetic study was venous blood of one healthy male donor subjected to in vitro gamma-radiation in doses of 0.1-3.0 Gy Cultivation of lymphocytes and preparation of chromosome specimens were carried out using variants of standard techniques. Chromosomes were stained separately with three-color DNA probes: for 1, 4 and 12 pairs and for 2, 3 and 8 pairs. Results. The increase of dose produced frequency of translocations growth when using both sets of DNA probes. When using any of them, the frequencies of FISH-registered translocations in all cells (stable and unstable) did not differ significantly from the same value only in stable cells. A comparison ofthetranslocation frequencies detected using DNA probes of different species also showed absence of statistically significant differences in both all and stable cells. Conclusion. The use of two selected sets of DNA probes demonstrated absence of significant differences between them in the observed frequencies of radiation-induced chromosome translocations.