Asking for guidelines to start L6 cell line culturing - (Dec/11/2013 )

Hello everyone,

I am a PhD student from Spain, so first of all sorry if my english have several mistakes.

I'm going to start working with L6 cell line. As no one is working with this cell line in my lab, i feel a little lost, and while i was reading bibliography i came across with some doubts that maybe any of you could clarify.

First of all, which subculture ratio should you recomend me? I have seen that ATCC talk about 1:20 or 1:40, but this seems to big ratio (compared with the cell lines of my lab partners).

Another thing is the growng speed? i haven't found any clue about how often is apropiated to make a subculture.

Respect to culture medium, i've seen many choose FBS before diferenciating and then horse serum at 2% in order to differentiate. But others use Calf serum. Is there any interesting diferences between those? What do you recomend?

Thank you very much for your attention.

-pellin-

I don't work with L6 cells, so I can't go into specifics. However, the advice on the ATCC website should be correct; they are the largest and most respected cell culture institution in the world and do know what they are doing.

The difference between FBS and calf serum is that FBS (fetal bovine serum) is harvested before the calf is born, so the components (mostly hormones, cytokines etc.) of the serum are different to those found in serum from animals that have been through the stress of birth, which results in massive hormonal and physiological changes.

-bob1-