Feeding Alex's cells with "Orangina"

Alex’s cells are taking off, they divide and multiply in the culture dish.

Skin biopsy with outgrowth of keratinocytes and fibroblasts

Alex: Where do my cells live now?

Outside of a tissue culture incubator

Inside of a tissue culture incubator

Birgitt: Your cells are kept in an incubator at 37C body temperature -like you see on these pictures- and a mixture of gas with 5% CO₂. These incubators are located in our tissue culture laboratory. Only trained staff have access to these rooms, which regularly get inspected to ensure proper safety conditions.

Alex:What do you feed my cells? I love pizza and chocolate but that's not what you feed them, right?

Birgitt: Your cells are fed with a cocktail of sugar, protein, and amino acids. It looks like Orangina. Feeding means, you remove the media with a glass pipette under vacuum and then add an ounce or so –depending on the size of the dish- of media with a new sterile pipette to the cells. We change the media every 2-3 days. We also supplement the media with antibiotics to prevent contamination of the cultures with bacteria or fungi.

Alex: I am just a bit competitive. Are my cells competitive too?

Birgitt: Definitely, your cells are growing great. On Day 8, we noticed the first fibroblasts growing out of the biopsy. See the labeled example above to illustrate the outgrowth of keratinocytes and fibroblasts from a skin biopsy.

Below you can see three pictures comparing the growth of your own cells over five days. Fibroblast cells typically double every 24 to 36 hours. The culture dish has some white markings which allow us now to take images from the same area and to follow the dividing cells. You can see how the space between the markings is filling up with cells. Soon this culture dish will be too small and we will have to transfer the cells to a larger dish. In technical jargon we call it “splitting the cells”.

Alex: Thanks so much. I am really amazed that these are my cells.