Kinetics of protein and DNA synthesis studied by mathematical modelling of flow cytometric protein and DNA histograms.

Mathematical models for histograms of cellular protein content as measured by flow cytometry were developed, based on theoretical protein distributions. These were derived from the age distribution of cells and the accumulation function for cellular protein content as a function of age within the cell cycle. A model assuming an exponential age distribution and an exponential protein accumulation function was found to give the best representation of protein histograms of exponentially growing NHIK 3025 cells. This is in good agreement with the known kinetic behaviour of such cells. By the combined use of the protein histogram model and a similar model for DNA content, and assuming linear DNA accumulation during S, the fraction of cells in S, as a function of cellular protein content, was simulated. This function showed good agreement with values of the [3H]TdR labelling index scored in cells sorted by flow cytometry from 5-channel intervals of the protein histogram. The protein and DNA histogram models were combined into a two-dimensional model for correlated protein/DNA measurements. Comparison between simulated data and experimentally derived two-dimensional protein/DNA histograms gave further support to the cell kinetic assumptions underlying the models, but also identified some minor deviations which could not be recognized in the analysis of the one-dimensional histograms.