[Use of 5-bromodeoxyuridine for determining the duration of cell cycle phases]

The method of differential staining of sister chromatids by means of 5-bromdesoxyuridine (BDU) was used to determine duration of the cellular cycle and its phases in a cell culture of Chinese hamster. The mitotic cycle lasted for 16 hrs, G1 for 5 hrs, S for 8 hrs and G2 for 3 hrs. These values do not differ from those obtained by the autoradiography. The given method permits quicker determination of the cellular cycle phases duration as compared with the autoradiography method.