Another way to study cells that are at the same stage of their cell cycle involves a technique called culture fractionation. This procedure avoids the potential problems of synchronization techniques, in which the inducing factor may itself alter or distort the normal events of the cycle. In culture fractionation, a random culture of cells (i.e., cells that are at various [...]
It is possible to determine the distribution of cell sizes (i.e., volumes) in a random population of cells. Because cell size is related to cell age, an age distribution is also obtained. If cells were produced in a manner like the commercial production of small spherical objects (such as ball bearings or marbles), then their sizes would be distributed normally [...]
When cells are cultured in a container of fixed volume, both the population density (i.e., the number of cells per unit volume of culture) and the population size (i.e., the total number of cells in the culture) increase at the same rate during the exponential phase of growth. If we consider a "biological unit" in such a culture as a [...]