Persistent expression of morphological abnormalities in the distant progeny of irradiated cells

Abstract The phenomenon of delayed heritable lethal damage (often referred to as ``lethal mutations'') in the progeny of cells which survive irradiation is now well established, but little is known of the mechanism by which this cell death occurs. Current theories suggest a generalised genomic instability affecting all cells which leads to the production of some mutations which are lethal, or alternatively that a lethal mutation gene is …