cells in culture

[IanMc]

We had a similar problem with defrosting cells. In the end it turned out to 
be a bad batch of centrifuge tubes. We were using sterile 30mL polycarbonate 
(I think) Universals. I presume the DMSOI in the freezing medium was 
leaching something toxic from the plastic. Took forever to pin it down.

Regards,

Ian Mc

"Tom Anderson" <ucgatan At ucl.ac.uk> wrote in message 
news:mailman.924.1169837269.19683.methods At net.bio.net...
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Pow Joshi wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Wolfgang....that histoire was comforting, knowing that I
>> was'nt the only one....
>
> I just spoke to one of my colleagues, whose HEKs are also mysteriously
> dying on her. Is it possible there's an iffy batch of medium about? She's
> using some sort of Gibco DMEM.
>
> My other thought was that it might be something related to the christmas
> holiday; if, for example, your insitute's water purification system was
> switched off over the break, it might have accumulated some sort of
> contamination, which could now be present in any media, PBS, etc that you
> make up locally. This would be unusual, and it would be odd for it to
> affect cells as robust as HEKs, but it has happened to people here. But
> then you'd expect other people to be having the problem as well.
>
> tom
>
> -- 
> Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL, London WC1E 
> 6BT
> (t) +44 (20) 76797264   (f) +44 (20) 76797805   (e) 
> thomas.anderson At ucl.ac.uk
>