Spatiotemporal analysis of DNA repair using charged particle radiation

Approaches to visualise the dynamics of the DNA lesion processing substantially contributes to the understanding of the hierarchical organisation of the DNA damage response pathways. Charged particle irradiation has recently emerged as a tool to generate discrete sites of subnuclear damage by its means of extremely localised dose deposition at low energies, thus facilitating the spatiotemporal analysis of repair events. In addition, they are of high interest for risk estimations of human space exploration (e.g. mars mission) in the high energy regime (HZE). In this short review we will give examples for the application of charged particle irradiation to study spatiotemporal aspects of DNA damage recognition and repair in the context of recent achievements in this field. Beamline microscopy allows determining the exact kinetics of repair-related proteins after irradiation with different charged particles that induce different lesion densities. The classification into fast recruited proteins like DNA-PK or XRCC1 or slower recruited ones like 53BP1 or MDC1 helps to establish the hierarchical organisation of damage recognition and subsequent repair events. Additionally, motional analysis of DNA lesions induced by traversing particles proved information about the mobility of DSBs. Increased mobility or the absence of large scale motion has direct consequences on the formation of chromosomal translocations and, thus, on mechanisms of cancer formation. Charged particle microbeams offer the interesting perspective of precise nuclear or subnuclear targeting with a defined number of ions, avoiding the Poisson distribution of traversals inherent to broad beam experiments. With the help of the microbeam, geometrical patterns of traversing ions can be applied facilitating the analysis of spatial organisation of repair.