Cell survival curve

Okay kiddo, imagine you have a bunch of little cells in a box. Now, let us say you want to see if these cells can survive if you give them some kind of treatment. For example, maybe you can give them medicine to fight off a germ.

Now, let us plot the survival of these cells over time. We call this plot the cell survival curve.

At the start, all the cells are alive, so the graph starts at 100%. As time goes on, some of the cells will die, and the percentage of surviving cells will decrease.

Now, here's the tricky part. The rate at which the cells die depends on the treatment you gave them. It could be that the medicine was super-effective, and the cells died quickly. Or maybe the medicine wasn't that great, and the cells died more slowly.

The shape of the cell survival curve tells us how effective the treatment was. If the curve is steep, it means the treatment killed the cells quickly. If the curve is shallow, it means the treatment wasn't that effective, and the cells died slowly over time.

So, in summary, the cell survival curve is a graph that shows us how effective a treatment is at keeping cells alive over time. The steeper the curve, the better the treatment worked.