Dear all,
I usually use cell media with phenol red. However, I need to use media without phenol red since I need to measure fluorescence from the media. As far as I am concerned, there has only been reported that phenol red has some estrogenic effect in MCF7 cancer cells. But nothing has been reported about the effects of phenol red in brain metastatic cell lines and in microglia or other brain resident cells. If you know something about it, please let me know.
I have also been looking around if there are any differences between media with and without phenol red. Indeed, there are some and I was wondering if any of you could tell me what they are due to or if these changes can affect my experimental results. Here I spot the differences.
- Whereas in DMEM with phenol, L-Tyrosine is used, in DMEM without phenol L-Tyrosine disodium salt dihydrate is used. The concentration of these aminoacids is also different.
-Sodium Pyruvate is present in DMEM with phenol red and absent in DMEM without phenol red.
-The final concentration of CaCl2-2H20, MgSO4-7H2O and NaH2PO4-H20 is different in these media.
Moreover, we are about to buy a cell line from ATCC and they recommend us to use their DMEM media. I think I will use DMEM media from Gibco since this is the one we currently use and we have. Do you think this can affect cell growth or our results?
Thank you in advance,
Anna
Dear Anna,
I don't know which DMEM you are referring to (from which company), but normally DMEM with/without phenol red is completely the same, just one is without phenol red. At least at Gibco there are the exact same formulations available, one with and one without phenol red.
Since DMEM is a standardized medium, there should also be no difference between different companies. Of course every company tells you to buy their own one, because the want to sell it ;-) but if it's not having any special compound, the company shouldn't matter at all.
I hope this helps you.
Dear Ariane,
Thanks for your fast reply.
I wanted to make clear that the presence of phenol red is not the only difference between DMEM from Gibco, as I noted in my main post. One of my questions was if this small differences could affect in my experimental results. Moreover, I should bear in mind that phenol red can interfere with gene expression in cells which grown is affected by androgens.
I don´t think it is going to make a difference if I am using DMEM from ATCC or Gibco. However, the amount of sodium bicarbonate is by far different. As far as I am concerned, this only serves as a pH indicator.
Hey,
for sure there are no differences if you check the right products ;-) here two links to Gibco DMEM, one with and one without phenol red. They have both the same ingredients.
http://www.thermofisher.com/de/de/home/technical-resources/media-formulation.14.html
http://www.thermofisher.com/de/de/home/technical-resources/media-formulation.42.html
Of course there are also special DMEMs and you can get DMEM with no/low/high glucose, with/without HEPES, Glutamine, Pyruvate,... but they are normally all available with and without phenol red, since the phenol red is only for pH...
Thank you Ariane and Alexander.
I am going to measure luminiscence in the media in which cells are grown/maintained. This is the reason I will use media without phenol red.
Dear Anna!
Now I have completely the same problem like to had last year. I need the DMEM without phenol red, but it is different from the DMEM I use normal. I think we use the same one. Could you let me know how and if you solved the problem?
Thank you,
Rebecca
Dear Rebecca,
I used DMEM without phenol red. I know it is slightly different but in my case the small differences should not affect the behavior of my cells and I kept those cells in media without phenol red for all my different experiments. I did not come with a better idea.
See you,
Anna
you can see a complete post about phenol red here
https://cellculture2.altervista.org/phenol-red/
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