Hello,
We recently purchased B16F10 cell line from ATCC. For the beginning of culturing, we used recommended DMEM from ATCC (4500 mg/ml glucose). Lately we tried to switch to DMEM from Corning (4.5 g/ml glucose), but we observed increased production of melanin (as shown in the picture: Left -DMEM ATCC, Right - DMEM Cornign), cells became sickly and would not proliferate. We gradually switched the proportion of each medium with each passage, 3:1 -> 1:1 -> 1:3 and finally 100% DMEM corning but at the stage of 1:1 they looked sickly already.
Medium was supplemented with 10% FBS (same company for both DMEMs) and 1% AA.
We tried the solution of DMEM with phenol red: DMEM without phenol red (1:1) because we suspected some toxicity from phenol red, yet the results were not much different.
What can cause this drastic change in cell morphology if both culture media are mostly the same in formula? The only difference is the concentration of sodium bicarbonate (higher concentration in sodium bicarbonate in corning medium).
For the future somebody with similar problems: due to the difference in sodium bicarbonate, conditions required for cell culture in the medium with higher NaHCO3 (3.7) is 10% of CO2 instead of the usuall 5%. We used the usuall - therefore, due to the inability to balance pH accordingly, we could observe morphological changes.
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