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Saturday, July 6, 2013

Dissociative Electron Attachment

That's a mouthful!  What's it mean?

Well, when thinking about ionizing radiation we usually think of a particle or photon (alpha, beta, gamma, etc.) traversing tissue and ionizing molecules in the tissue.  Let's call that the core.

Ionization means that electrons have been stripped from those molecules.  Those electrons are also particles and can cause ionization themselves (they are essentially beta particles).  Let's call them the pnumbra, they are also known as delta rays.

Dissociative electron attachment is an interesting phenomenon where very low energy electrons (LEE's) can cause a molecule to dissociate (break apart) at certain bonds.  Here's some highly technical info.

So the core causes damage directly (by ionizing molecules, DNA for example) and indirectly (by ionizing other molecules, H2O for example, which can then damage DNA).

But there's also the pnumbra which can also cause direct and indirect DNA ionization.

But wait, there's more!

There's also dissociative electron attachment which can damage DNA.

(And I haven't even included any epigenetic effects!)

A wonderful way to visualize all of this is with a cloud chamber (obviously the core length and pnumbra in a tiny cell is much  smaller than what can be see with the naked eye using a cloud chamber):











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