Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2012) 127: 37
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2012-12037-7

Regular Article

The use of pKZ1 mouse chromosomal inversion assay to study biological effects of environmental background radiation

Historical Museum of Physics and Research Centre “Enrico Fermi”, Piazza del Viminale, 2, 00184, Rome, Italy

^* e-mail: dariacapece@tiscali.it

Received: 18 January 2012
Revised: 8 March 2012
Accepted: 20 March 2012
Published online: 4 April 2012

Abstract

Life has evolved on Earth for 3 billion years in the presence of background ionizing radiation (IR). All organisms on Earth are continuously exposed to varying amounts of natural radiation and they have therefore incorporated in their normal biology a daily stimulus of ultra-low-dose radiation. A question arises about the biological effects of environmental background radiation and whether the biochemical behavior of living organisms would differ if it was absent. Here, we report our experimental design to address these scientific questions, which use pKZ1 mouse chromosomal inversion assay to study the biological behavior of different cell cultures maintained in “cosmic silence” and in reference background conditions.