Accounting for radiation-induced indirect damage on DNA with the Geant 4-DNA code

• Published in: Physica medica Vol. 51; pp. 108 - 116
• Main Authors: de la Fuente Rosales, Liset, Incerti, Sebastien, Francis, Ziad, Bernal, Mario A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Italy Elsevier Ltd 01.07.2018; Elsevier
• Subjects: Damage; DNA; Indirect; Nanodosimetry; Physics; Nanodosimetry; Indirect; Damage; DNA
• ISSN: 1120-1797; 1724-191X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ejmp.2018.06.006

•The Geant4-DNA package was used to determine direct and indirect DNA damage.•For the first time Geant4-DNA is used with an atomic-resolution model to this end.•The approach explicitly account the reaction of the OH radical with each H atoms.•The results follow the same trend as in other peer simulations and experiments. The use of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations remains a powerful tool to study the biological effects induced by ionizing radiation on living beings. Several MC codes are commonly used in research fields such as nanodosimetry, radiotherapy, radiation protection, and space radiation. This work presents an enhancement of an existing model [1] for radiobiological purposes, to account for the indirect DNA damage induced by ionizing particles. The Geant4-DNA simulation toolkit was used to simulate the physical, pre-chemical, and chemical stages of early DNA damage induced by protons and α-particles. Liquid water was used as the medium for simulations. Two phase-space files were generated, one containing the energy deposition events and another with the position of chemical species produced by water radiolysis from 0.1 ps up to 1 ns. These files were used as input in the radiobiological code that contains the genetic material model with atomic resolution, consisting of several copies of 30 nm chromatin fibers. The B-DNA configuration was used. This work focused on the indirect damage produced by the hydroxyl radical (OH) attack on the sugar-phosphate group. The approach followed to account for the indirect DNA damage was the same as those used by other radiobiological codes [2,3]. The critical parameter considered here was the reaction radius, which was calculated from the Smoluchowski’s diffusion equation. Single, double, and total strand break yields produced by direct, indirect, and mixed mechanisms are reported. The obtained results are consistent with experimental and calculation data sets published in the literature.