Does reduced gravity alter cellular response to ionizing radiation?

This review addresses the purported interplay between actual or simulated weightlessness and cellular response to ionizing radiation. Although weightlessness is known to alter several cellular functions and to affect signaling pathways implicated in cell proliferation, differentiation and death, its influence on cellular radiosensitivity has so far proven elusive. Renewed controversy as to whether reduced gravity enhances long-term radiation risk is fueled by recently published data that claim either overall enhancement of genomic damage or no increase of radiation-induced clastogenicity by modeled microgravity in irradiated human cells. In elucidating this crucial aspect of space radiation protection, ground-based experiments, such as those based on rotating-wall bioreactors, will increasingly be used and represent a more reproducible alternative to in-flight experiments. These low-shear vessels also make three-dimensional cellular co-cultures possible and thus allow to study the gravisensitivity of radioresponse in a context that better mimics cell-to-cell communication and hence in vivo cellular behavior.