December 25, 2023  8th IER seminar of FY2023 was held. ＜Project Lecturer Ishiniwa, Professor Yoschenko＞

Institute of Environmental Radioactivity (IER) regularly holds the IER seminar in which the faculty members report on their research results, with the aim of facilitating their research activities and promoting communication.

In the 8th IER seminar of this fiscal year that was held on December 25, 2023, two presentations were given by Project Lecturer ISHINIWA Hiroko and Professor Vasyl YOSCHENKO to 25 participating researchers and students.

Project Lecturer Ishiniwa presented the development of FISH probes for dicentric chromosome analysis in the bank vole. Radiation causes a dose-dependent increase in chromosome aberrations, but determining such aberrations requires a high level of expertise and experience. Such personnel are limited therefore analysis takes a long time. The population of researchers working with wild animals is even smaller. Therefore, we are working to establish a method that allows even inexperienced researchers to perform the analysis easily and in a short time by staining with fluorescent dyes (FISH probes). Dr. Ishiniwa presented the results and future challenges of developing FISH probes for the bank vole and its relatives conducted with Dr. Olena Burdo, who came to Japan from Ukraine last year for training.

Professor Yoschenko gave a presentation entitled “Progress in the IER forest studies”, which covered two topics. First, experimental data on long-term changes in ⁹⁰Sr inventories in the Scots pine biomass in the Chornobyl Red Forest were presented and the factors affecting the accuracy of prediction of the ⁹⁰Sr dynamics were discussed. The very high bioavailability of ⁹⁰Sr and significant dependence of its root uptake on the local conditions have been demonstrated. In the second part of the presentation, Prof Yoschenko analyzed results of the study of full genome methylation in pine populations in Fukushima and Chornobyl exposed to different levels of chronic radiation, and reviewed the previous results revealing the radiation-induced changes occurring in pine at the different levels of biological complexity.

After each presentation, various questions and comments were raised by IER faculty members.