On the Calculation of TCID50 for Quantitation of Virus Infectivity

The most important property of a virus is its infectivity. To measure infectivity, one can assay viral replication in cells to obtain a titer for a given virus stock. A titer is defined as a given number of infectious viral units per unit volume, and an infectious unit is the smallest amount of virus that produces recognizable effects [e.g., cytopathic effect (CPE), dot blot immunoreactivity]. The median tissue culture infectious dose (TCID50) is defined as the dilution of a virus required to infect 50% of a given cell culture.