I applaud the work and results finding micro-homology at the break points of a radiation-induced chromosome aberration published by Cornforth et al. (1 ) in the July 190.1 issue of Radiation Research. However, I wish to contest the interpretation of the results in terms of non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) and suggest an alternative. In my opinion, the facts speak for themselves.
In 1973, my colleague, HP Leenhouts, and I published a theoretical paper relating radiation-induced DNA double-strand breaks to cell survival (2 ). The dose relationship ascribed to the induced double-strand breaks was linear quadratic with dose. This dose relationship for the induction of DNA double-strand breaks after irradiation was confirmed to be linear-quadratic experimentally using neutral filter elution techniques by Radford (3, 4 ), Prise et al. (5 ) and Murray et al. (6 ) in three different laboratories on...