Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2012
The experiments to be discussed here all involve the irradiation of cells in early interphase and the observation of these cells, or rather their chromosomes, at the first mitosis following radiation exposure. The irradiation of such G1 cells results in the formation of chromosome-type aberrations that are a consequence of breaks or exchanges involving the whole chromosome, both chromatids being affected in exactly the same way and at identical loci. These chromosome-type aberrations are of various kinds and a large proportion of them are very easy to detect cytologically. The four main types that are normally studied by cytologists, since they can be easily and objectively scored, are the terminal and interstitial deletions and the dicentric and ring aberrations (see text-fig. 1).
This paper was assisted in publication by a grant from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.