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Evidence for Multiple Populations in Normal Erythropoiesis using Chromosome Length as the Criterion

Abstract

IT was recently reported by Powsner and Berman1 that the No. 1 chromosome in megaloblastic erythropoiesis in humans was approximately one-third longer than the corresponding normal chromosome. It appeared to one of us (S. A.) that the length of normal chromosomes may be distributed bimodally and not unimodally. To test the possibility that there may be multiple populations, the fit of data to unimodal and bimodal normal distribution curves was determined by means of a specially programmed IBM 7074 computer. Briefly, the data were divided into a series of population pairs, and the mean and standard deviation were determined for each population of each pair together with its proportion and the mean and standard deviation of the data considered as a single population2,3. We also calculated the likelihood that each of the population pairs could be represented as a single normal distribution and as a double normal distribution2,3. Chi-square with three degrees of freedom was calculated from the maximum likelihood distribution parameters2 and the probability (P) of a single population was determined.

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References

  1. Powsner, E. R., and Berman, L., Blood, 26, 784 (1965).

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  2. Mood, A. M., and Graybill, F. A., in Introduction to the Theory of Statistics, 72, 275, second ed. (McGraw-Hill Book Co. Inc., New York, 1963).

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  3. Croxton, Frederick E., in Elementary Statistics in Medicine and the Biological Sciences, 59 (Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1953).

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ALBERT, S., POWSNER, E., BERMAN, L. et al. Evidence for Multiple Populations in Normal Erythropoiesis using Chromosome Length as the Criterion. Nature 212, 825–826 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1038/212825a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/212825a0

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