Genome Stability vs. Deprivation or Enrichment of the Geomagnetic Field

Summary This study suggested that cell-cycle kinetics, DNA replication and DNA repair react to magnetic fields differently. During their culture growth cycle, which lasted about five days, Friend erythroleukemia cells were either kept in the absence of magnetic fields in a magnetically shielded room or irradiated in a solenoid with 70 μT at 50 Hz plus 45 μT DC of the Earth: some cells grew without inducer of in vitro differentiation; others were induced to differentiate hemoglobin through dimethylsulfoxide. It emerged that, during a single culture growth cycle, while proliferation was slightly accelerated by the magnetic-field irradiation achieved in the solenoid both in undifferentiating and dimethylsulfoxide-differentiating cells, DNA replication did not appear to significantly depend on the magnetic-field deprivation achieved in the magnetically shielded room. However, as a result of a 318-day long magnetic-field irradiation in the solenoid, DNA replication remained unchanged in undifferentiating cells and partially inhibited in dimethylsulfoxide-differentiating cells. Following the same long magnetic-field irradiation in the solenoid, the amount of labelled repair patches in the parental DNA strands was slightly reduced.