Deep Underground Space Medical Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, No. 37 Guoxuexiang, Chengdu, China; Department of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, No. 37 Guoxuexiang, Chengdu, China; Department of Head & Neck Surgery, Sichuan Cancer Hospital and Institute, School of Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No. 55, Section 4, South Renmin Road, Chengdu, China.
Deep Underground Space Medical Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, No. 37 Guoxuexiang, Chengdu, China; Department of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, No. 37 Guoxuexiang, Chengdu, China.
Environ Int. 2018 Nov;120:207-214. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2018.07.031. Epub 2018 Aug 8.
The world is entering a new era of exploring and exploiting the deep-underground space. With humans poised to reach historical depths in the use of the deep Earth, it is essential to understand the effect of the deep-underground environment on the health of humans and other living organisms. This article outlines the history and development of biological research conducted in deep-underground laboratories and provides insight into future areas of investigation. Many deep-underground laboratories have investigated the effects of reduced cosmic ray muons flux, searching for rare events such as proton decay, dark matter particles, or neutrino interactions, but few have focused on the influence of the environmental factors in the deep-underground on living organisms. Some studies revealed that prokaryote and eukaryote cells maintained in low levels of background radiation exhibited an stress response, which manifested as changes in cell growth, enzyme activity, and sensitivity to factors that cause genetic damage; however, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. There remains an urgent need to understand the detrimental and beneficial biological effects of low background radiation and other factors in the deep-underground on humans and other organisms. Consequently, a multidisciplinary approach to medical research in the deep-underground has been proposed, creating a new discipline, deep-underground medicine, and representing a historical milestone for exploring the deep Earth and in medical research.
世界正在进入探索和开发地下深层空间的新时代。随着人类准备在利用深层地球方面达到历史的深度，了解地下深层环境对人类和其他生物的健康的影响至关重要。本文概述了在地下深层实验室进行的生物研究的历史和发展，并提供了对未来研究领域的洞察。许多地下深层实验室研究了减少宇宙射线μ子通量的影响，寻找质子衰变、暗物质粒子或中微子相互作用等稀有事件，但很少有实验室关注地下深层环境因素对生物的影响。一些研究表明，在低背景辐射水平下保存的原核生物和真核生物细胞表现出应激反应，表现为细胞生长、酶活性和对引起遗传损伤的因素的敏感性发生变化；然而，其潜在机制尚不清楚。目前迫切需要了解低背景辐射和地下深层其他因素对人类和其他生物的有害和有益的生物学影响。因此，已经提出了一种在地下深层进行医学研究的多学科方法，创造了一个新的学科，即地下深层医学，这是探索深层地球和医学研究的一个历史里程碑。
