| Summary: | Neutron irradiation which could trigger severe biological effects, is being applied in nuclear plants, radiotherapy, and aerospace gradually. Low dose hyper-radiosensitivity response of low Linear Energy Transfer (LET) irradiation on the cell survival has become a matter of great interest since its discovery, but a few research have been done on this response induced by neutron irradiation. To investigate this response induced by neutron irradiation, Caenorhabditis elegans ( C. elegans ) was irradiated by neutron irradiation. The surviving fraction of C. elegans on the 12th day after irradiation was analyzed, which showed a hyper-radiosensitive response at low doses and followed by an increase in survival fraction at slightly higher doses. The finding of this work that neutron irradiation decreased the surviving fraction in a non-dose-dependent manner was different from previous low-LET irradiation studies. To understand the experimental results, a DNA damage-repair model was introduced. By comparing experimental results with theoretical analyses, we suggest that the low dose hyper-radiosensitivity response of neutron irradiation may possible related to different radiation types and DNA damage recognition proteins and immune system of C. elegans.
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