A Chance to Fail
7 February 2022
Scientists can isolate cells from organisms and create artificial conditions that mirror what is happening inside our bodies. If the environment around them is carefully controlled, these samples can be continually cultured, providing a reproducible way of testing new drugs or therapies without harming test subjects.
The main drawback of this approach is the cost associated with reagents and training. Cell & Tissue culture is very susceptible to contamination - after all there are no immune cells in these flasks that can defend them from foreign pathogens. Each time a sample is contaminated - whether it be plates, tubes, or flasks in your incubator - days (sometimes weeks!) of progress are lost. It also raises the possibility that other experiments in the lab have been exposed to the same infectious agent, and everything has to stop until the source is identified.
Contamination can come from equipment or nutrient media, but the vast majority of the time it is “operator error” - the scientist inadvertently touching a sterile instrument on a random surface for a split second before working with cells. The margin for error is very small, and because of this new students are very rarely entrusted with Tissue Culture responsibilities. Their inexperience may very well put the whole lab’s experiments at risk but therein lies the conundrum - how can young scientists develop a skillset that they were never given the opportunity to practice, a chance to fail? What role can online laboratory training play in this space?
All of this is a long preamble to our new 3-part video series on Cell & Tissue Culture. Part 1 goes through the basics:
The reagents and equipment needed
How to resuscitate frozen cells
Subculturing cells into new growth conditions
The topics dovetail nicely with our previous video on Aseptic Technique, also linked below.
Part 2 (how to spot common mistakes) and Part 3 (Bacterial cell culture) will go live later this week - stay tuned.
Jack.
