The most common question that I get while living in Ireland, when I talk to my family and friends at home, is “What do you do all day in the lab?” In the simplest of terms, I work with cells! Among the many new techniques that I have learned here, the most important technique that I perform in the lab is cell culture. Cell culture is the act of growing cells in a controlled environment so that they can be studied or kept and used for future experiments. Prior to this position at Cúram, I had only performed cell passaging a handful of times and it still seemed very daunting to me. In this journal, I am going to take a deeper dive into one of the most fundamental procedures in biology laboratories, and one which I now perform every week!
In my experience, there are two main types of cell culture: primary culture and cell lines. Primary culture involves cells that are extracted directly from plant, animal,or donor tissue. Cells can also be purchased from a company, as a part of a continuous cell line. Most cells can only proliferate, or undergo cellular division (mitosis), a finite number of times. Continuous, or immortalized, cell lines have been modified (chemically or after introducing a virus) to continue to proliferate indefinitely.
