Germ cell mutagenesis in medaka fish after exposures to high-energy cosmic ray nuclei: A human model

Astronauts beyond the Earth's orbit are exposed to high-energy cosmic-ray nuclei with high values of linear energy transfer (LET), resulting in much more biological damage than from x-rays or gamma-rays and may result in mutations and cancer induction. The relative biological effectiveness of these nuclei depends on the LET, rising to as high as approximately 50 at LET values of approximately 100-200 keV/microm. An endpoint of concern is germ cell mutations passed on to offspring, arising from exposure to these nuclei. A vertebrate model for germ cell mutation is Medaka fish (Oryzias latipes). We exposed wild type males to doses of 1 GeV per nucleon Fe nuclei or to 290 MeV per nucleon C nuclei. They were mated to females with recessive mutations at five-color loci. The transparent embryos from >100 days of mating (representing exposed sperm, spermatids, or spermatogonia) were observed so as to detect dominant lethal mutations and total color mutations, even though the embryos might not hatch. The relative number of mutant embryos as a function of dose were compared with those induced by gamma-rays. The relative biological effectiveness values for dominant lethal mutations and total color mutations for exposed sperm and spermatids were 1.3-2.1 for exposure to C nuclei and 1.5-3.0 for exposure to Fe nuclei. (The spermatogonial data were uncertain.) These low values, and the negligible number of viable mutations, compared with those for mutations in somatic cells and for neoplastic transformation, indicate that germ cell mutations arising from exposures to cosmic ray nuclei are not a significant hazard to astronauts.