Elucidation of dose-dependent transcriptional events immediately following ionizing radiation exposure

Long duration space missions expose astronauts to ionizing radiation events associated with highly energetic and charged heavy particles. Such exposure can result in chromosomal aberrations increasing the likelihood of the development of cancer. Early detection and mitigation of these events is critical in providing positive outcomes. In order to aid in the development of portable devices used to measure radiation exposure, we constructed a genome-wide screen to detect transcriptional changes in peripheral blood lymphocytes shortly after (approximately 1 hour) radiation exposure at low (0.3 Gy), medium (1.5 Gy) and high (3.0 Gy) doses compared to control (0.0 Gy) using Affymetrix(R) Human Gene 1.0 ST v1 microarrays. Our results indicate a number of sensitive and specific transcriptional profiles induced by radiation exposure that can potentially be implemented as biomarkers for radiation exposure as well as dose effect. For overall immediate radiation exposure, KDELC1, MRPS30, RARS, and HEXIM1 were determined to be effective biomarkers while PRDM9, CHST4, and SLC26A10 were determined to be biomarkers specific to 0.3 Gy exposure; RPH, CCDC96, WDYHV1, and IFNA16 were identified for 1.5 Gy exposure; and CWC15, CHCHD7, and DNAAF2 were determined to be sensitive and specific to 3.0 Gy exposure. The resulting raw and analyzed data are publicly available through NCBI's Gene Expression Ominibus via accession GSE64375.