Radiation application to our lives; Ion-beam application to life science and agriculture

Tanaka, Atsushi

In the field of biotechnology and medical application, functional analysis of proteins involved in DNA repair and replication has been progressed. The ion beam breeding technique, which was developed in JAEA for the first time in the world as a new mutation induction technology, has been applied for many varieties of plants and microorganisms such as flower, crop, vegetable, yeast, alga and fungus. The collimating heavy-ion microbeam system at JAEA-Takasaki has provided target irradiation of heavy charged particles to biological material at atmospheric pressure using a minimum beam size 5 mm in diameter. No-invasive imaging methods are powerful tools for biology and medical diagnosis. The Positron Emitting Tracer Imaging System (PETIS) is one of such methods and it visualizes the distribution of positron-emitting radioisotope in intact plants like a video camera in order to understand plant nutrition. The in-air micro-PIXE system has also been used for investigation of elemental analysis in a cell for medical diagnosis such as Asbestos. A new radionuclide for medicine such as Cu-64 and Br-76, was produced by using AVF cyclotron and studied for the diagnosis of cancer by positron emission tomography, PET.