The dye is well retained by cells for up to 96-120 hours after loading depending on how fast the cells are proliferating. The dye is passed to daughter cells upon mitosis. The duration of the color visibility depends on the number of times the cell replicates since the signal decreases in half each time. Usually the cells can be followed for 4 doublings before the signal is too weak to differentiate from background. This is about 5 days for Jurkat and HeLa cells.