I ant to know if HeLa cells line commonly available in cell culture labs is infected with HPV16/18 or not?
HeLa cells are one of the earliest cells to be used for cell culture because of the fact that they are "immortal cell lines". They were at first isolated from a African American lady named as Henrita Lacks (so called as HeLa cells). There are different strains of the cells and in general, most of them are positive for Human Papilloma virus (HPV-18), positive for keratin staining by immunoperoxidase and possess normal expression of Retinoblastoma (RB) and reduced expression of p53.
Its not specifically an "infection" by HPV-18 but an integration of most of the genome of HPV-18 into the genome of the HeLa cells.
You can find a nice summary at:
https://jvi.asm.org/content/89/8/4051
" Human papillomavirus 18 (HPV18) is integrated in the HeLa genome (10). Three segments of HPV18 are integrated at a known fragile site on chromosome 8 (locus 8q24) which is located approximately 500 kb upstream of the myc gene. The integrated portion of HPV18 includes genomic regions from bases 1 to 3088 and 5736 to 7857 (11) of the reference genome, and thus contains the long control region (LCR), the E6, E7, and E1 genes, and partial coding regions for the E2 and L1 genes. The E4, E5, and L2 genes are deleted. The integration causes a truncation in the E2 gene, a negative regulator of viral E6 and E7 expression (12), thereby allowing transcriptional activation of the E6 and E7 oncogenes. In addition, the integrated HPV18 sequence differs from the reference genome at 23 base positions."
In short, Yes they are.
I believe around 80% of people sexually active possibly positive for HPV.
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