Eur. Phys. J. E (2009) 30: 317-324
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2009-10522-7

Regular Article

Distribution of DNA fragment sizes after irradiation with ions

¹ Marian Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Jagellonian University, Kraków, Poland
² Mark Kac Complex Systems Research Center, Jagellonian University, Reymonta 4, 30-059, Kraków, Poland
³ Institute of Physics, Wroclaw University of Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370, Wroclaw, Poland
⁴ Biophysics Department, GSI, Planckstrasse 1, 64291, Darmstadt, Germany

^* e-mail: gudowska@th.if.uj.edu.pl

Received: 1 April 2009
Revised: 9 September 2009
Accepted: 18 September 2009
Published online: 13 October 2009

Abstract

Ionizing radiation is responsible for production of double-strand breaks (DSBs) in a DNA structure. In contrast to sparsely ionizing radiation, densely ionizing radiation produces DSBs that are non-randomly distributed along the DNA molecule and can form clusters of various size. The paper discusses minimalistic models that describe observable patterns of fragment length in DNA segments irradiated with heavy ions and applies the formalism to interpret the recent experimental data collected by use of atomic force microscope (AFM).