Analysis of Residual DSBs in Ataxia-Telangiectasia Lymphoblast Cells Initiating Apoptosis

Abstract

In order to examine the relationship between accumulation of residual DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) and cell death, we have used a control and an ATM (Ataxia-Telangiectasia Mutated) defective cell line, as Ataxia-Telangiectasia (AT) cells tend to accumulate residual DSBs at long times after damage infliction. After irradiation, AT cells showed checkpoint impairment and a fraction of cells displayed an abnormal centrosome number and tetraploid DNA content, and this fraction increased along with apoptosis rates. At all times analyzed, AT cells displayed a significantly higher rate of radiation-induced apoptosis than normal cells. Besides apoptosis, 70–85% of the AT viable cells (TUNEL-negative) carried ≥10γH2AX foci/cell, while only 12–27% of normal cells did. The fraction of AT and normal cells undergoing early and late apoptosis were isolated by flow cytometry and residual DSBs were concretely scored in these populations. Half of theγH2AX-positive AT cells undergoing early apoptosis carried ≥10γH2AX foci/cell and this fraction increased to 75% in late apoptosis. The results suggest that retention of DNA damage-inducedγH2AX foci is an indicative of lethal DNA damage, as cells undergoing apoptosis are those accumulating more DSBs. Scoring of residualγH2AX foci might function as a predictive tool to assess radiation-induced apoptosis.