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The Distribution of DNA in Exponentially-Growing Cell Populations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2017

P. D. M. MaCdonald
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Abstract

This paper illustrates a simple method of deriving distributions for samples from cell populations in exponential growth. The distribution of the elapsed proportion of the DNA-synthetic phase of the cell cycle is derived and used to find the distribution of DNA content in a random sample of cells. Allowing for a normally-distributed measurement error, the resulting distribution agrees well with DNA distributions observed empirically. The statistical analysis of DNA distributions, and the interpretation of the distributional parameters in terms of cell population kinetics, are discussed and illustrated with an example.

Type
Part IX — Biomathematics and Epidemiology
Information
Journal of Applied Probability , Volume 12 , Issue S1 , 1975 , pp. 387 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 Applied Probability Trust 

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