THE LABELLED MITOSES CURVE AND THE ESTIMATION OF THE PARAMETERS OF THE CELL CYCLE

A method is described for fitting a 'fraction labelled mitoses'curve to a set of data points and for estimating the values of the best fitting parameters of the cell cycle. Estimates of the SE of the parameters are obtained. The method depends on the fact that when gamma distributions are used to describe the durations of the phases of the cell cycle, the Laplace transform of a FLM curve can be described by simple analytic functions enabling a least squares fit to be made to a set of Laplace transforms of the experimental data. The method is easy to program and quick to execute.