Subculturing
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As cells grow and divide, nutrients and growth factors are
depleted from the cell culture. Thus, the cell culture
periodically needs to be fed additional nutrients and
growth factors in order to continue cell
propagation. Subculturing is the process whereby fresh media
is added to 14 day old cell cultures and the resulting
suspension is subsequently split into several flasks.
- Fresh media is added to each cell culture. Each flask is then gently swirled to suspend the cells.
- The resulting cell suspension is pooled into an appropriately sized container.
- The pooled cell suspension is split into several new flasks.
- Each flask is weighed so that water lost to evaporation can be replaced at day 7.
- The diluted cell culture is placed in an incubator which provides the proper environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, humidity, light) for the cells to grow.
