Hi Michael,

I have done xenogenic co-culture compositions (human/rat & human/mouse) in the past. And published more ore less successfully. In my project I was heading for the changes that occure in each cell type by direct co-culture. I do thing that cytokines will be recognized vice versa. Check Uniprot or do the test for the most important onces.

One advantage can be, that you can do direct co-culutre and real-time PCR with species specific primers without any sorting or puryfication.

Best Soenke

Hi Michael. I don't have experience with xenogenic cultures, but the answer to cross acting cytokines is yes, especially between rat and mouse. Cytokines that are highly conserved usually are cross-reactive, ex IL1, IL6. There is more non-cross reaction with human cytokines, mostly for those produced by T cells, like IL2 and IL4. Hope this helps.

Hello Michael,

Yes, it is possible in world of science. Infact world of science always welcome something new as that will open door to new possibilities.

As suggested above, cytokines are highly conserved between rat and mice. To be very specific, There are papers available where people have done human and rat co culture experiments and interestingly some of the human proteins were expressed by rat cells. I don't remember the exact paper but these type of studies have been done in the past.

So,you can try such experiments without bothering the laws and generalizations of science..

Hope it helps !