My lab is currently culturing human bone-marrow mesenchymal stem cells. I've noticed when I trypsin the cells for passaging/counting that there appears to be two sizes of cell present (see image attached). Some are very large and elongated but another population is very small. The cells are not contaminated. Has anyone else seen similar or can offer advice?
Note - they are a low passage number (3), not contaminated and purchased from a supplier rather than isolated by our lab
Hi Kathryn,
yes. The cells are a mixed population. I have single cell cloned MSCs using hyclone and conditioned medium (many years ago) and these gave rise to several cell types with different sizes, morphologies, growth rates and differentiation potentials.
Completely normal.
What you do about it depends on the goals of your project.
Kind regards,
Jason
Hi Kathryn,
BM-MSCs are heterogeneous population of cells particularly in early passages. You can select different clones of them!
Best
Massoud
It is normal, you can also notice it when you analize your cells with flow citometry, there are cells with several different sizes
Thank you all for your answers- they have been very helpful. I wondered, is the difference in size due to cells differentiating? Or just a mixed population to start with? Bearing in mind these are from a supplier rather than freshly isolated from tissue by myself.
I´ve seen those differences from the beginning of my primary explant cultures and keep seeing it after several passages. I would guess is a mixed population from the beginning.
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