Estimation of S phase duration in goat epidermis by an in vivo intradermal double labeling technique using bromodeoxyuridine and tritiated thymidine.

When studying skin diseases resulting from alterations in the rate of epidermal cell turnover it is useful to be able to quantify parts of the epidermal cell cycle. An in vivo intradermal technique is described which uses tritiated thymidine followed by bromodeoxyuridine to label cells in the S phase of the cell cycle. Combined autoradiographic and immunocytochemical techniques were used to quantify the flux of cells into and out of S phase. These results were then used to estimate the length of S phase. The technique was found to provide clear distinctive labelling of S phase nuclei with both reagents. This avoided many of the problems encountered with double labelling techniques using two radioactive labels. S phase was calculated to be 7.7 hours for goat skin.