• Question: what do you feed your cells

    Asked by kabeer1 to Helen, Alexis on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by euano12345.
    • Photo: Alexis Barr

      Alexis Barr answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      We feed them a mixture that contains sugar (glucose), lots of amino acids to make protein, salts, vitamins, and, very importantly, serum from the blood of calf foetuses. I know this last one sounds a bit gross but it contains lots of Growth Factors that the cells need to keep reproducing. We also add some antibiotics to stop the cells getting infected by bacteria.

    • Photo: Helen Tunbridge

      Helen Tunbridge answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Like Alexis said, there are lots of components that make up cell food, but there are different kinds which have slightly different amounts of each of those things. Cells can be very fussy eaters and if you don’t give them enough of one thing they’ll get stroppy and die! So you have to give your cells the right kind of food, depending on what it is.
      They have really snappy names like:
      Eagle’s Minimal Essential Medium (EMEM),
      Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle’s Medium (DMEM),
      Iscove’s Modified Dulbecco’s Medium (IMDM),
      Roswell Park Memorial Institute medium (RPMI),

      They are all basically very subtle variations on the same recipe!!

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