Contamination of cell ?? - (Jan/16/2010 )

Dear sceientists,

I am currently working on ovarian cancer lines and i am growing them lately, however, i experienced somewhat a contamination in my cell culture. My Question is :

When i examined the cell growth under the scope, i found some hair-liked stuff attached nearby the cells, are there anyone know what will this hair-like stuff will be?? I have discarded the culture to prevent further contamination but i am not sure what kind of contamination is.

It happen to some of my lab mates as well, we are not sure what this hair-like stuff is ,can anyone help??

Thanks a lot~~~~~~~~~

OC_student

You're probably seeing the early hyphae suggestive of a fungal contamination. It is always best to discard the cells and media, decomtaminate your incubator at the very least, before starting a new batch of cells. If you get the comtamination again, you could probably assume that the culture was infected before it was frozen. You might consider treating the cells with an anti-fungal like Amphotericin B, but you'd need to be aware of the alterations in lipid biology that occur with amphoB. Hope that helps-Good Luck

jah on Jan 16 2010, 10:00 PM said: