I understand Mycoplasma can fly under the radar, but are other forms of contamination obvious over extended culture?
I have been growing neurons for 30 days, and since there are no obvious contamination issues, how confident can I be they are not contaminated? (Minus the possibility of Mycoplasma)
Hi Aj. Bacterial and fungal contamination show up with changes in media color, appearance of turbidity, cell death, cell detachment, etc. Therefore is easy to realize when your cells are contaminated. However, Mycoplasma contamination is not so obvious, sometimes you can see granulation inside of the cells. Anyways, the only way to make sure you don't have Mycoplasma is by testing your cells. Good luck and healthy cultures!
Hello Aj Keefe
Bacterial, fungal and yeast contamination in cell culture are easily detected due to turbid appearance or change in color of the culture medium. As these contaminants have a high growth rate and colonize the nutrient rich cell culture milieu quickly, they can be detected easily. But there are other contaminants like viruses owing to their small size are very difficult to remove from culture medium, serum and other such solutions of biological origin. Viruses do not cause serious problem unless they have a cytopathic effect on cell cultures. So even in their presence cells may seem to behave normally giving an appearance that the culture is not contaminated.
Please refer to the article below:
Article Virus contaminations of cell cultures-A biotechnological view
Single cell protozoa and their spores can also be damaging to culture. Because of slow growth and somewhat similar morphology to the cultured cells they are difficult to detect in culture.
So you are right! How confident can anyone be that the cell culture is free of contaminants when the cells in culture appearing good suddenly die and the reason is not known.
Best Wishes.
You may have contamination which is not as evident. It could be any, we normally we cannot identify it. Sometimes we confuse.
Cell debris are incomplete or torn cells that appear when you centrifuge, abrasion, or mechanical brake down
Does this picture look like bacterial contamination?
It doesn't have cells, when I was in doubt, I incubated the media only.
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