Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 30, 2026

13:39
Cell Culture Techniques and Practices to Avoid Contamination by Fungi and Bacteria in the Research Cell Culture Laboratory
Published on: July 7, 2023
Curbing rampant cross-contamination and misidentification of cell lines
1Department of Biology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA. nardone@cua.edu
Biotechniques
|September 27, 2008
Abstract:
A son's challenge started an emeritus professor of biology on a three-year odyssey to get biological researchers to correct a decades-long problem with cross-contaminated and misidentified cell lines. These errors may account for more than 15% of mammalian cultures, wasting resources and undermining the integrity of research.
Related Concept Videos
Cell Lines
A cell line is a population of cells grown in vitro that can be subcultured over several generations. Normal cells cease to divide after a certain number of cell divisions, a process known as replicative senescence. This number, called the Hayflick limit, was conceptualized by Leonard Hayflick in 1961 when he observed that fetal cells grown in culture could only divide 40-60 times. This limit is due to the shortening of the telomeres during each round of cell division, preventing cell division...
Overview Of Cell Separation And Isolation
Cell separation was first achieved in 1964 by S. H. Seal, who separated large tumor cells from the smaller blood cells using filtration. Two years later, Pohl and Hawk performed experiments on how cells respond differently to a nonuniform electric field based on the cell type. Such observations were the inception of cell separation methods, which allow isolating a single cell type from a heterogeneous sample.
