Effect of ionizing radiation on the proliferation of human embryonic stem cells

We studied the effect of ionizing radiation (IR) on continuous growth of seven hESC lines. Cells were exposed to 0, 0.2, or 1 Gy of X-rays, and the growth rates of cell populations were assessed by measuring areas of the same individual colonies versus time. The population doubling times (DT) of sham-irradiated cells varied from 18.9 to 28.7 hours for different cell lines. All cell lines showed similar reaction to IR, i.e. cell populations dropped within 24–48 hours post IR; after that they recovered and grew with the same rate as the sham-irradiated cells. The relative cell survival (RCS), i.e. the ratio of normalized cell population in the irradiated samples to that of the sham-irradiated ones varied from 0.6 to 0.8 after 0.2 Gy, and from 0.1 to 0.2 after 1 Gy IR for different cell lines. We found that the RCS values of hESC lines correlated directly with their DT, i.e. the faster cells grow the more radiosensitive they are. We also found that DT and RCS values of individual colonies varied significantly within all hESC lines. We believe that the method developed herein can be useful for assessing other cytotoxic insults on cultures of hESC.