DNA cell cycle analysis of K562 and Ehrlich tumor cells by flow cytometry

Monitoring cell activation processes and cell cycle progression in cells of various ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins is one of the base challenges in cellular biology. Flow cytometric analysis by DNA histograms show the cell cycle distribution and indicate the S-phase fractions of cell populations, as well as those cells in Go/G1 and G2/M phases. Human and murine normal diploid cells, K562 tumor cells (human origin) and Ehrlich cells (murine origin) were analysed using a propidium iodide staining procedure for flow cytometry. Our preliminary results suggested that this method may be a useful tool to detect cell populations with quantitative changes in DNA content, and to estimate cell fractions.