Whats special about the Columbia microbeam?
The single-particle microbeam facility at RARAF is fully automated. It is possible to expose individual cells to an exact number of a-particles, including one, at a rate of more than one per second. This speed has allowed large experiments to be performed with mutation and oncogenic transformation as the biological endpoints, as well as all lethality and chromosomal aberration endpoints. This unique facility has made it possible to perform experiments that directly challenge some long-standing dogmas of radiation biology. For example, it has been possible to demonstrate clearly the existence of a “bystander effect” for both mutation and oncogenic transformation. The bystander effect is defined to be a biological effect in cells that are not themselves traversed by a charged particle but that are close neighbors of cells that are.
