title: Intraclonal variation in proliferative potential of human diploid fibroblasts: stochastic mechanism for cellular aging.
abstract: At several points during the growth of a clone of human embryonic lung fibroblasts in vitro, 100 to 200 cells were removed at random and the proliferative potential of each cell was determined. At each sample point, a wide variation in remaining population doubling ability was observed among the individual cells and the distributions of doubling potentials were distinctly bimodal. Furthermore, the two cells arising from a single mitosis differed in their ability to proliferate by as many as eight population doublings (256-fold in the number of cells produced). The results suggest that a stochastic process is responsible for determining the limited proliferative potential of human embryonic lung fibroblasts.
mesh_terms: D002455:Cell Division; D002470:Cell Survival; D002999:Clone Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D003260:Contact Inhibition; D003470:Culture Media; D005347:Fibroblasts; D006801:Humans; D008938:Mitosis; D011336:Probability; D013269:Stochastic Processes
chemical_list: D003470:Culture Media