3.3.1. The hypersensitivity to low-doses (HRS) effect The number of radiation-induced DNA damage, directly linked to physical energy deposition, is systematically proportional to the dose. Conversely, repair and signaling activities and clonogenic sur-vival are generally not linearly linked to the dose. The phenomenonof hypersensitivity to low dose (HRS) followed by induced radiore-sistance (IRR) is a representative example of a non-linearly dose-dependent event In fact, HRS is generally observed between 1 mGy and 50 cGy with a maximum peak at a cell-line.-dependent threshold of about 10–30 cGy. At this peak, clonogenic survival mayreach similar values as for doses of 1–3 Gy (i.e. at dose about 100times higher!). Although a number of molecular models have beenproposed, mechanisms of HRS are however unclear. It has beensuggested that HRS may depend upon changes in chromatin con-formation, failure of the ATM-dependent G2/M checkpoint, or DNArepair defects. More recently, we have shown that HRS may beexplained by the lack of recognition of DSB by the repair and sig-naling pathway. In fact, all the irradiation conditions where HRS is observed correspond to exposure duration of less than 30 s during which the DSB recognition does not seem to occur. Interestingly, during our investigations, cells with an unex-pectedly high number of DNA breaks have been observed between1 mGy to 30 cGy. These so called “highly damaged cells” might correspond to the multi-aberrant cells observed incytogenetics. Investigations are therefore needed to explain how and in what conditions HDC phenomenon is linked to HRS and what are the molecular and cellular mechanisms behind the occurrence of these specific low-dose events. Two types of data suggest that chromatin organization influences HRS effect: (1) inhibitors of the polyPolymerase that is required for chromatin integrity, would facilitate the occurrence of HRS