Cell culture, tissue culture, and microbial culture

Monique leah elago cagatin Che 40 a student

November 28, 2011

1.

Define cell culture.

Cell culture is the maintenance and growth of cells of multicellular organisms outside the body in specially designed containers and under specific conditions of temperature, humidity, nutrition, and freedom from contamination. Generally speaking the organisms which are stored and isolated in a laboratory are considered to be the objects of tissue culture. This technique of cell culture made the study and development of different cultures of cells for experiments and biological assays. Some of the major applications of cell culture are: 1.) to investigate the normal physiology and biochemistry of cells. For instance studies of cell metabolism. 2.) to test the effect of various chemical compounds or drugs on specific cell types. 3.) to study combinations of various cell types to generate artificial tissues. The advantage of using cell culture is the consistency and reproducibility of results that can be obtained from using a batch of clonal cells. The disadvantage is that, after a period of continuous growth, cell characteristics can change and may become quite different from those found in the starting population.

2.

Differentiate cell culture, tissue culture, microbial culture.

While cell culture, as stated above, is the complex process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions, tissue culture on the other hand is the method of biological research in which fragments of tissue from an animal or plant are transferred to an artificial environment in which they can continue to survive and function. The cultured tissue may consist of a single cell, a population of cells, or a whole or part of an organ. A microbiological culture, or most commonly called microbial culture, is a method of multiplying microbial organisms by letting them reproduce in predetermined culture media under controlled laboratory conditions. Microbial cultures are used to determine the type of organism, and its abundance in the sample being tested.

3.

Give a specific example of cell and microbial cultures and determine their culture growth media.

Cell culture example: A study was conducted by Alan Yung-Chih Hu, Yu-Fen Tseng, Tsai-Chuan Weng, et. al. to produce inactivated influenza H5N1 vaccines from MDCK cells in serum-free medium. Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells were cultured in three different commercially available serum-free media (Plus-MDCK, VPSFM and ExCell) and one serum-containing medium (DMEM with 5% FBS supplement) in 75 cm2 flasks over three passages after inoculation. It was later concluded that Plus-MDCK medium was the best candidate (out of the four media used) for the production of influenza H5N1 vaccines.

Microbial culture example: Anthrax bacteria (Bacillus Anthracis) grow well in standard media. For diagnostic blood-agar is often used with little or no hemolysis. Direct sputum, smears of wounds, stool, from hairs, hides, feedstuffs, fertilisers, soil or enrichment broth are plated on blood-trimethoprim-agar plates, incubation for 18 to 24 hours at 36+-1. The bacilli have capsules in the animal body but are not capsulated in artificial culture. On agar plates the colonies are large, white and rough and have "curled hair" edges.

References: http://www.scq.ubc.ca/cell-culture/ (Accessed: November 27, 2011) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/597042/tissue-culture (Accessed: November 27, 2011) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiological_culture (Accessed: November 27, 2011) http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014578 (Accessed: November 28, 2011) http://www.ourfood.com/Anthrax.html (Accessed: November 28, 2011)