A Review on radiation tolerance mechanism of higher plants

Yokota, Yuichiro; Inoue, Masayoshi; Narumi, Issei; Funayama, Tomoo; Kobayashi, Yasuhiko; Tanaka, Atsushi

It has been known that many types of higher plants are several hundred times more radio-tolerant than mammals at an individual level. There was, however, no available information on the detail mechanism of radiation tolerance of higher plants. Thus, we have done the radiobiological studies using tobacco BY-2 cell line as a model plant cell. In their studies, we made clear that tobacco cells are ten times more radio-tolerant than mammalian cells, and that radioresistant tobacco cells can tolerate a large number of DNA double-strand breaks compared with mammalian cells. In this review, we discussed the radiation tolerant mechanism of higher plants by taking together the past findings with our latest data: tobacco cells are tolerant of radiation-induced chromosomal aberration although DNA double-strand break repair abilities of tobacco and mammalian cells are almost the same.