Since Hela cells do not show contact inhibition, how much does it matter that I always subculture them timely? Subculture cells when they are at arount 80% confluency is good practice, but can anyone explain to me why it is so important? What I can think of is that this may help homogenize the cell conditions and produce more reproducible data, but is there more to it? Thanks in advance!
I think you understand that correctly. It is good practice, and certain things change depending on the growth stage. There's always a chance that you mess up specific experiments and confuse yourself, depending on what it is that you're doing. Overgrowing makes them poison themselves with waste like ammonia. Within limits, they'll recover.
It's much more important for primary cells, or wherever you have an unstable phenotype that can be lost during culturing. That's where you can really bias the population away from what you want, by stressing them just a little. For immortal HeLa, it's not "so" important. Just good practice.
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