However, judging from the present level of knowledge, to our regret, not all of the technologies used for those studies were appropriate for detecting the genetic effects of radiation. A plan is being developed to use this new technique for elucidating the genetic effects of radiation. DNA from those cells will be used for a large-scale molecular genetic study in the future. As the number of repetitions depend on the individual, there is no distinction between normal and abnormal. Although the number of study subjects is limited, no effect of parental radiation exposure has been detected to date.
Deletion is the type of mutation most frequently caused by radiation.
In case of autosomal genes, deletion in full or in part occurs as loss of one of the two genes normally seen. At present, two procedures are under development to efficiently detect such mutations. One is a combination of the Southern blot and chemiluminescence techniques. This procedure detects abnormalities by measuring both the intensity of the luminescence as well as the size of DNA fragments. In this method, however, many probes have to be prepared because the DNA of each gene is needed as a probe for each test.