Wednesday, 17 July 2013

How do you break up cell clumps when passaging?

In some protocols for setting up primary cultures (for example from mouse bone marrow or rat endometrium), there is a step that requires pushing cell suspension through a large needle to get rid of clumps. Of course, this carries a high risk of damaging the cells, so sometimes collagenase is used instead.



It might also be helpful to wash your cells with PBS without ions before passaging and use tripsin with EDTA. That should get rid of at least some calcium from the plate, so that action of adhesion proteins would be inhibited.

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