Pattern of DNA synthesis and its effect on the classification of cells by flow cytometry.

A flow cytometer produces a DNA distribution which contains information about the proportions of cells in various phases of the cell cycle. In this report we show that the form assumed for the rate of DNA synthesis in a cell plays an important part in the estimation of those proportions. We compare three forms for the rate of DNA synthesis, one of which is derived from knowledge of the mechanism of DNA replication, and find that they give substantially different estimates of the proportions of cells in the G1 and G2 + M phases.