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By BRIDGE8 under license from Mangorolla CIC 2024
Hi scientistsophie!
When I grow cells in the lab, we have little plastic trays that I put my cells in. I cover them with a liquid which contains a mix of all the hormones, growth factors and nutrients that they need to grow. The cells will attach themselves to the bottom of the plastic tray and begin dividing and will eventually cover the whole bottom of the tray.
The cells I used in the lab are a cell line which means they have been immortalized. They continue to grow and grow and grow a bit like a tumor does. My cell line is called HaCaT and they are skin cells. They have a gene called p53 deleted. p53 is often called the ‘guardian of the genome’ and would normally signal to stop growth when its not needed.
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