Effect of low frequency magnetic field on efficiency of chromosome break repair

ABSTRACT

DNA repair is essential to maintain genome integrity. There is scientific evidence that exposure to magnetic fields (MF) can produce alterations in DNA repair without clear conclusions. This work aims to study the cellular response to and repair of a very deleterious type of DNA damage, the DNA double strand break (DSB), in S. cerevisiae, under MF exposure. In S. cerevisiae cells, pairs of DSB were induced enzymatically by HO endonuclease by plating the cells on Galactose-containing media. The repair processes took place under exposure to a 50Hz, 2.45mT sinusoidal MF during 21 days. MF was generated by a pair of Helmholtz coils. MF induced 1.29- and 1.5-fold increase in the number of colonies grown at day 21 of exposure in relation to untreated controls for Pho91 and Rmd5 strain, respectively. In relation to the kinetics of DSB repair during MF exposure, a higher increase (55.56-fold) in DNA reparation was observed at day 15 for Rmd5 strain in relation to the slight increment (1.18-fold) found for Pho91 strain. The results suggest that long-term MF exposure could increase the DNA repair activity and there may be a relationship between the position of the DSB and the distance to the centromere.

KEYWORDS:

• Low frequency magnetic field
• DNA double-strand break repair
• yeast
• S. cerevisiae
• DNA damage

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to Dr Anna A. Friedl (Department of Radiation Oncology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany) for kindly providing the yeast strains. We also thank Ms. L. Gil Carmona (Universidad de Málaga, Spain) for her technical assistance.

Conflict of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Plan Andaluz de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación (PAIDI); Junta de Andalucía [code CTS-181].