Radiation Biology Team

The radiation biology team carries out on studies various biological effects of fast heavy ions. It is also involved in the development of a new technique to breed plants by heavy-ion irradiation. Fast heavy ions can cause dense and localized ionization of matter along their tracks, in contrast to photons X-rays and γ-rays, which cause randomly distributed isolated ionization. The localized, dense ionization can cause double-strand DNA breaks in cells induced by; these breaks are not easily repaired, and they result in more effective mutation than that single-strand DNA breaks. A unique feature of our experimental facility at the RIKEN Ring Cyclotron (RRC) is that living bodies in helps them the atmosphere or bottles can be irradiated since the delivered heavy-ion beams have sufficiently high energy that penetrate matter to a significant depth. The radiation biology team utilizes a dedicated beam line (E5B) of the RRC to irradiate microbes, plants, and animals with a wide variety of ion beams, ranging from C to Fe. The research subjects include physiological studies on DNA repair, genome analyses of mutation, and mutation breeding of plants by heavy-ion irradiation. Some new cultivars have already been introduced in the market.

Research Subjects

• Biological effects caused by heavy-ion irradiation
• Ion-beam breeding and genome analysis
• Innovative applications of heavy-ion beams

Publications

1. Hirayama R., Ito A., Tomita M., Tsukada T., Yatagai F., Noguchi M., Matsumoto Y., Kase Y., Ando K., Okayasu R., Furusawa Y.:
   "Contributions of direct and indirect actions in cell killing by high-LET radiations"
   Radiation Research 171 212-218 (2009)
2. Shimada S., Ogawa T., Kitagawa S., Suzuki T., Ikari C., Shitsukawa N., Abe T., Kawahigashi T., Kikuchi R., Handa H., and Murai K.:
   "A genetic network of flowering-time genes in wheat leaves, in which an APETALA1/FRUITFULL-like gene, VRN1, is upstream of FLOWERING LOCUS T"
   Plant J. 58, 668-681 (2009)
3. Kikuchi S., Saito Y., Ryuto H., Fukunishi N., Abe T., Tanaka H. and Tsujimoto H.:
   "Effects of heavy-ion beams on chromosomes of common wheat, Triticum aestivum"
   Mutation Res. 57, 194-202 (2009)
4. Niwa K., Hayashi Y., Abe T. and Aruga Y.:
   "Induction and isolation of pigmentation mutants of Porphyra yezoensis (Bangiales, Rhodophyta) by heavy-ion beam irradiation"
   Phycol. Res. 57, 194-202 (2009)
5. Nakano M., Amano J., Watanabe Y., Nomizu T., Suzuki M., Mizunashi K., Mori S., Kuwayama S., Han D., Saito H., Ryuto H., Fukunishi N., and Abe T.:
   "Morphological variation in Tricyrtis hirta plants regenerated from heavy ion beam-irradiated embryogenic calluses"
   Plant Biotech., 27, 155-160 (2010)
6. Y. Kazama, T. Hirano, H. Saito, Y. Liu, S. Ohbu, Y. Hayashi, T. Abe,:
   "Characterization of highly efficient heavy-ion mutagenesis in Arabidopsis thaliana"
   BMC Plant Biol., 11, 161 (2011)
7. Niwa K., Yamamoto T., Furuita H. and Abe T.:
   "Mutation breeding in the marine crop Porphyra yezoensis (Bangiales, Rhodophyta): Cultivation experiment of the artificial red mutant isolated by heavy-ion beam mutagenesis"
   Aquaculture 314, 182-187 (2011)
8. Yasui Y., Mori M., Aii J., Abe T., Matsumoto D., Sato S., Hayashi Y., Ohnishi O. and Ota T.:
   "S-LOCUS EARLY FLOWERING 3 is Exclusively Present in the Genomes of Shortstyled Buckwheat Plants that Exhibit Heteromorphic Self-incompatibility"
   PLoS ONE, 7(2), e31264 (2012)
9. Abe T., Ryuto H. and Fukunishi N.:
   "Ion beam radiation mutagenesis"
   in Plant Mutation Breeding and Biotechnology (Shu, Q.Y., ed.), The Joint FAO/IAEA Programme, pp. 95-102 (2012)