ABSTRACT
The data cover a wide range of cell types and exposure conditions. Other experimental data is presented demonstrating the direct correlation between cell survival and chromosome aberrations and also between cell survival and mutation frequency per surviving cell. All these data provide evidence of the direct link between the molecular lesion, the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) double strand break and the three cellular effects which is predicted by the model. A problem which arises when the neutral filter elution method is used to measure DNA double strand breaks after exposure of cells to densely ionising radiation is that the densely ionising radiation creates clustered double strand breaks. This means that the double strand breaks are not induced randomly in the cell nuclear DNA, contrary to the situation with sparsely ionising radiation.
