
The tested mathematical model has been used to
describe the influence of oxygen on the chemical
stage of the radiobiological mechanism in a paper [8].
The indirect effect of the radiobiological mechanism
is caused by aggressive radicals formed during the
radiolysis of water. The influence of oxygen on the
chemical stage of the radiobiological mechanism
plays an important role mainly in radiotherapy
because the oxygen concentration is higher in healthy
cells than in cancer cells. Therefore, radiation
sensitivity is different for healthy cells and cancer
cells. The dependence of the concentrations of
individual radicals on time under various oxygen
concentrations is showed to explain the oxygen
effect. The obtained results were compared with
experimental data, and a good agreement was
achieved.
In this paper, the influence of N2O on the chemical
stage of water radiolysis was analyzed with the help
of Continuous Petri nets. The time dependencies of
the concentrations of individual radicals under
various N2O concentrations were simulated to show
the impact of N2O molecules on radical
concentrations, mainly increasing concentration of
OH radicals, which results in more significant
damage to the DNA molecule. To create our
mathematical model, using Continuous Petri nets,
primary products of water radiolysis
(
), and associated products (,
, ,
,
, ) were taken into account.
Their initial yields and physicochemical constants
have been taken from the literature dealing with the
radiolysis of water, for example
[10][12][13][14][18][19][20][21][26][27]. As in
previous publications, the corresponding radical
clusters (at low-LET radiation) were described as
spherically symmetric systems [21].
2 Mathematical model of the influence
of N2O on the chemical stage of water
radiolysis
The basic mathematical model of the chemical stage
of water radiolysis was created in our previous papers
[6][7][8]. The mathematical model in this paper is
extended to include the influence of N2O on the
chemical stage of water radiolysis. Therefore, we
will not repeat the derivation of the mathematical
model, and only the short overview will be done.
The basic assumptions of the mathematical model
are:
Water radicals arise inside the diffusing
radical cluster, containing a nonhomogeneous
concentration of individual species [22].
Individual radicals diffuse differently,
according to their diffusion coefficients, must
also be included in the mathematical model.
Diffusion coefficients are taken from the
literature.
Immediately after cluster formation,
simultaneously with the diffusion of radicals
also the chemical reactions of radicals and
other species present in the cluster run. Their
rate constants are taken from the literature,
too.
In our mathematical model, we assume a
spherical symmetry of the diffusion clusters
[22], and initial conditions are given by the
volume of the cluster and by the
numbers of corresponding radicals.
All these conditions are described in detail in our
previous papers, where the general mathematical
model has been derived, too. In this paper, only the
final mathematical model, simulating the influence of
N2O, will be presented. The dynamics of the cluster
evolution can be described by a system of ordinary
differential equations, which solve the diffusion of
radicals and their chemical reactions.
To solve the system of ordinary differential
equations, the Continuous Petri nets have been used.
Petri nets enable us to easily create the mathematical
model with the help of graphical tools as well as to
perform the rapid simulations, which allows us to
optimize the parameters of the simulation model
[16][17][24][25]. The detailed description of the
solution of our mathematical model using Petri nets
can be found in [6][7][8], where Petri nets are also
sufficiently described.
The radicals, ions, and other substances arising inside
the cluster, and diffuse into the surroundings, are
presented in Table I, where we can also see their
diffusion coefficients and designation. All diffusion
coefficients are taken from the literature. We will
assume that at the beginning of the cluster diffusion
(at time t0), when the chemical reactions start, only
the following species will be present: , ,
,
and . In Table II, we can see chemical
reactions running after cluster formation, which is
considered in our mathematical model. The rate
constants of the chemical reactions presented in
Table II are also taken from the literature.
WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on BIOLOGY and BIOMEDICINE
DOI: 10.37394/23208.2022.19.7
Jiří Barilla, Pavel Simr, Květuše Sýkorová