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Fluctuation analysis: the effect of plating efficiency

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Abstract

This paper supplements an earlier paper which explained how to calculate the probability distribution of the number of mutants that would be observed in a fluctuation test experiment. The formulas in that work give the distributions to be expected under a wide variety of experimental conditions, but the method it uses when only a fraction of the mutants will produce visible colonies are clumsy and inefficient. Here I describe efficient procedures for dealing with that case, provided that the mutation rate per cell division remains constant during the experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, Brown University, 02912, Providence, RI, USA

    F. M. Stewart

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  1. F. M. Stewart
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Stewart, F.M. Fluctuation analysis: the effect of plating efficiency. Genetica 84, 51–55 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00123984

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00123984

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