what is mock cell line? - (Feb/04/2009 )

guys, what is mock cell line? is it derived from human tissue or animal tissue? why is it being used so much for virus cultures? I can't find this info on ATCC's website or internet. believe me I searched everywhere.

Curtis on Feb 4 2009, 08:48 PM said:

a mock setting is a control setting where you do exactly the same as in your experimental set-up except you leave out the specific stimulus you want to provide. Maybe it's more comprehensible with an example: Let's say you want to study the effects of p53 overexpression in a cell line. You can do this by transfecting a plasmid with the p53 cDNA into the cell line. However, you have to make sure the effects you see are due to the p53 and not due to the plasmid backbone or the transfection procedure. So the mock cell line will be the same cell line as you use to introduce the p53 plasmid into, except in the mock setting you transfect the cells with an empty plasmid.

Hope I made it a little more clear ...

if you were adding a drug to your cells, that drug could be dissolved in a non aqueous solvent such as DMSO, ethanol.

in the mock cell line you would add same volume of solvent to control for any effect of the solvent

I have been wondering about MOCK as weel, thnnx guys for the info.

@dpo: I'm not completely sure if you are right with your example. An empty backbone transfection is an "empty backbone control" whereas your cells treated with the same transfection reagent (like Lipofectamine or s.th. else) like your whatever-plasmid-transfection but without any plasmid is your mock control. S.th. similar to WT, but stressed with chemicals/reagents in this case...

That's what I understood, but maybe I am wrong...