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Growing tissue in the lab
Name: mike s
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Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
How do Scientists grow new tissue cells in the lab?
Replies:
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "new" cells. Several kinds of cell
growing are done. One way is to break an organ or tissue apart into its individual
cells and grow them in a medium of nutrients, controlled temperature, humidity, and
carbon dioxide/oxygen. This is called "primary culture" because the cells come right
out of an organism. Another method is to create an "immortal cell line". This is a
type of cell isolated from a cancerous tumor, or a non-tumor cell which is infected
with a cancer gene after it's isolated. Being cancerous, these cells grow forever in
a dish, with the appropriate nutrients etc as long as you remove cells from time to
time to prevent overcrowding. These cells can be frozen at about -100F forever and
rethawed when needed. There is a library of frozen cells, thousands of types, and a
catalog. Scientists can order what they need any time! Finally, you can make specific
mutant cell lines by starting as above with an immortal cell, and inserting a specific
gene (or deleting one) permanently from the DNA of the cell to change almost any property
you want. So there it is.
--ProfBill
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Update: June 2012
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