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Appl Environ Microbiol. 1972 April; 23(4): 784-790
Copyright © 1972 American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Estimating the Number of Organisms in Quantal Assays

¹ Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06510

ABSTRACT

It has been demonstrated by virologists that, when procedural difficulties can be overcome and host variation can be eliminated, dosage-response data from virus assays conform with the one-particle theory of infection for both plaque counts and tissue cultures. Based on this theory, the number of virus particles from quantal virus assays can be estimated. Here a set of tables is presented from which the number of estimated particles can be obtained directly for several dilution factors and a number of dilution levels. Maximum likelihood estimation of particle counts is also illustrated using a computer program that we have prepared.