A Monte Carlo investigation of radiation damage to chromatin fibers and production of DNA double strand breaks using Geant4-DNA code

In the presented research we propose to improve on historically accepted radiobiological models via Monte Carlo simulation of radiation tracks passing through a cell nucleus modeled with up-to-date subnuclear structures. This is performed by generating a radiation track database using the Monte Car...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lee, Brian
Other Authors: Wang, Chris K.
Format: Others
Language:en_US
Published: Georgia Institute of Technology 2015
Subjects:
DNA
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1853/53106
Description
Summary:In the presented research we propose to improve on historically accepted radiobiological models via Monte Carlo simulation of radiation tracks passing through a cell nucleus modeled with up-to-date subnuclear structures. This is performed by generating a radiation track database using the Monte Carlo code, Geant4-DNA, that simulates radiation interactions at the nanometer scale of DNA. These tracks are called upon from the database and intersected with a cell nucleus model that incorporates DNA-containing structures. This allows for a Monte Carlo simulation of how DNA double strand breaks are produced by radiation. The results can be used to correlate to many experimentally observed biological endpoints, e.g. chromosome aberrations as well as cell death.