Comparison of Methods of Cell Cycle Analysis in Paramecium tetraurelia

ABSTRACT. Four methods are commonly used to study cell cycle processes in Paramecium tetraurelia. These include stage frequency analysis in asynchronous cultures, hand selection of synchronous dividing cells, selection of newly divided cells by elutriation centrifugation, and the sister cell method. We have compared the timing and resolution of stages of oral morphogenesis and micronuclear mitosis with each method. The temporal resolution obtainable with the sister cell method was inadequate to position the timing of morphogenesis stages within the cell cycle. Both the asynchronous method and the hand-selected synchronous samples methods are prone to bias. Elutriation centrifuge synchronization provides large samples with resolution comparable to that of hand selected samples. The elutriation method is the least prone to bias when <5% of the parent culture of Paramecium is selected.