Mystery Cells
Terra Sigillata has word about an NIH open letter on cell culture line identities. Over the years, some cell lines have been shown to be contaminated by other cells (particularly by HeLa cells, those immortal, nearly indestructible cervical cancer cells popular with many cell biologists), and verifying the identity of cell lines has become a problem, many times, especially since there’s no easy cut-and-dry method to verify a cell line. The NIH is still pushing for such verification, apparently, because otherwise the research is difficult to believe.
Wikipedia has an nice list of possible cell line contaminations.
My current lab works mainly on primary fibroblasts that we isolate ourselves, so we don’t have as many problems with cell line contamination, but I’m curious as to how many other labs are affected by this.
