Kinetics of lymphocyte division in blood cultures studied with the BrdU-Giemsa technique

Normal human lymphocytes were cultured for 72 h with different doses of BrdU. The analysis of metaphases processed with the BrdU-Giemsa method shows that in leukocyte cultures 3 different lymphocyte populations coexist which are able to perform 1, 2 or 3 rounds of replication in vitro. Moreover, it was concluded that 5 mug/ml is the minimal dose of BrdU inducing good differentiation in the areas of sister chromatid exchanges.