title: Planning the suicide experiments.
abstract: Suicide experiments involve a great degree of uncertainty in the counting of cell colonies. This work studies from a statistical point of view the precision of the estimation as a function of the number of experimental units which are used. Assuming that the colony numbers in recipients follow a Poisson distribution, we give the necessary number of recipients (a) to determine with a given accuracy the percentage of DNA synthesizing cells (S cells), (b) to test whether or not a cell population is quiescent, and (c) to compare the percentages of S cells in two cell populations.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D002453:Cell Cycle; D002470:Cell Survival / Q000187:drug effects; D046508:Culture Techniques; D003584:Cytological Techniques; D004247:DNA / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D004273:DNA, Neoplasm / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D051379:Mice; D009374:Neoplasms, Experimental; D011336:Probability; D013154:Spleen / Q000166:cytology
chemical_list: D004273:DNA, Neoplasm; D004247:DNA