FBS & FCS: any difference? - (Dec/27/2005 )

I know this might sound silly, but is there any difference whatsoever between foetal calf serum and foetal bovine serum? I mean, calf IS in fact bovine, right? anyway, recently in my lab we changed the serum we're buying from FCS to FBS (for money reasons). Will it damage my 293 cells? and what about other cells (e.g. NIH3T3 etc)?

Thanks in advance

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As far as I know, foetal bovine serum and foetal calf serum are the same thing. I asked a friend and she said that foetal calf serum was the term that was originally used, but that foetal bovine serum is now the common term to use

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you are right fetal serum from calf is the same than from bovine .
However it can change something because you change the batch of your serum, and sometimes some cells are very sensitive to different serum batch. i.e. primary cell cultures

when you want to change the batch, you should ask the provider to send a little aliquote and test cell growing and some biological activities in parallel with the old serum.

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