Damaging Intermolecular Relaxation Processes Initiated by Heavy-Ion Irradiation of Hydrated Biomolecules
Intermolecular Coulombic decay (ICD) is considered a general phenomenon that plays a key role in many fundamental and applied fields related to biological environments. In many cases, however, the mechanisms and efficiency of ICD have yet to be uncovered. A prominent example is heavy-ion cancer therapy. Here, we report the first detection of a damaging intermolecular relaxation cascade initiated by heavy-ion bombardment of hydrated pyrimidine clusters. The process can significantly contribute to the high biological effectiveness of heavy-ion irradiation and thus might play an essential role in many radiotherapy techniques. Inner-valence ionization of the cluster initiates ICD and triggers proton transfer between water molecules, producing destructive low-energy electrons, <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mrow><a:msup><a:mrow><a:mi>HO</a:mi></a:mrow><a:mrow><a:mo stretchy="false">•</a:mo></a:mrow></a:msup></a:mrow></a:math> radicals, and hydrated protons. Notably, the efficiency of ICD was found to increase dramatically with the number of water molecules, making ICD the dominant decay mechanism after inner-valence ionization. These findings indicate that the biological damage, caused by ICD in aqueous environments, is much more severe than was previously recognized.
Authors
- Xintai Hao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9037-2312)
- Shenyue Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9872-2244)
- Bo Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1675-9137)
- Jiaqi Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7076-5143)
- А. Б. Трофимов (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3523-7086)
- Z. K. Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5486-7844)
- Fang Feng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3120-2871)
- Xiaorui Xue (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4104-1162)
- Xiaolong Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4301-8724)
- Sisi Yan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8482-840X)
- M. Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2408-8089)
- Alexander I. Kuleff (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2583-4370)
- X. Ma (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9831-0565)
- Caojie Shao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0590-8571)
- Hong Lin
- Youjin Yuan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1761-9040)
- Meitang Tang
- Lorenz S. Cederbaum (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4598-0650)
- Enliang Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5703-6501)
- Dalong Guo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3488-2008)
- Shaofeng Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9920-2344)
- A. D. Skitnevskaya (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9328-1598)
- Lijun Mao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0023-8217)
- Xueguang Ren (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6132-092X)
- S. Gu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5159-939X)
- Tongmin Zhang
- Zhenyu Yan
- Jiancheng Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8393-513X)
- Da-Yu Yin
- Hang Yuan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6332-4078)
- Yue Gao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1160-8006)
- Dongmei Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8453-1778)
- Jinyu Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3825-5206)
- Xin-Liang Yan
Institutions
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Heidelberg University (DE)
- Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RU)
- Institute of Modern Physics (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Lanzhou University (CN)
- Xi'an Jiaotong University (CN)
- Irkutsk State University (RU)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review X
- Published
- 2025-03-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevx.15.011053
- Citations
- 5
- Primary Topic
- Radiation Therapy and Dosimetry
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 7.59
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation
- National Key Research and Development Program of China