Human insulin for cell culture? - (Apr/04/2012 )

Hello!
I have a question about insulin as a growth supplement for culturing cell lines.
I have been using bovine insulin for a couple of cell lines in the past, but it is apparently on world-wide shortage at the moment.
I can find recombinant human insulin expressed in yeast, however I am sceptical about using it as I am not certain about how it would affect the cells.
Has anyone used human insulin for cell sulturing before? Has anyone switched from bovine to human inslulin before? Also, would you think that any effect would be cell line specific?
Thank you in advance for helping!
Ioanna

Dear

ioannap


Bovine insulin differs from human insulin in only 3 amino acids.
I can't tell you if it could affect your cells badly or not.
but if I were you, and try to repeat some experiment I may expect some changes or discrepancies between old and new results.
if you have no other choice, you should give it a shot

Thanks a lot for your answer
From what I've found searching online, pretty much all companies have stopped selling bovine insulin and have switched to the human one.
Bovine has worked for me in the past so I'm not happy about having to switch (why change something that is working already?!), however I will prob have to in the end, so I'll repeat experiments I've already done and see if there are differences in the results.