Fig. 4
From: Suppressed DNA repair capacity in flight attendants after air travel
Quantitation of DNA basal damage and repair kinetics using the alkaline CometChip assay. (a) Representative comet images of basal DNA damage (refers to basal genomic DNA damage prior to irradiation) in before (BF) and after (AF) flight sample in quiescent PBMCs. The area between the red and green lines indicates the DNA damage in tail region (% Tail DNA) that is detectable above background fluorescence. (b) Violin plot representing the basal DNA damage in isolated PBMCs from BF (maroon) and AF (blue) samples (n = 9 FA). Each symbol represents the average of 5 median values from approx. 300 comets per individual at each timepoint. “ns” represent no significant difference among the samples tested using two-tailed paired t-test. (c) PBMCs were irradiated with 4.0 Gy of X-rays and DNA damage was measured at 0-, 5-, 15-, 30- and 60-min post irradiation along with mock irradiated (-15 min) samples obtained from FA before (BF, maroon dotted line, upward facing triangle) and after (AF, blue solid line, downward facing triangle) flight travel. The percentage of DNA in the tail region (%Tail DNA, y-axis) vs repair time (in min, x-axis) represents average repair kinetics of nine FA. Each symbol represents the average of 5 median values from approx. 300 comets each per timepoint per FA (n = 9 FA). Error bars represent mean ± SD.
