4 Must-know tips of purchasing cell lines

4 Must-know tips of purchasing cell lines

You must have searched “how to purchase xx cell line” online. So how to purchase a good cell line via various advertisements? Here are some useful tips for purchasing cells.

Tip 1: Clear cell information

If you want to purchase the cell lines, of course, you should know which cell line you want to buy, so it is the most common requirement to know the information of the purchased cell line. The name of the cell is the most important information. It often contains the information such as species and tissue source, so that we can quickly get the identity of cells. Then you need to know whether your target cell is a primary cell or a cell line. Primary cells can maintain their original genetic characteristics and are suitable for experimental research with high requirements such as antibiotic screening, cell differentiation and transformation; The cell lines have the advantages of low price, easy to culture, unlimited passages; These two kinds of cells are not only different in application, but also in price. Cells need to be selected according to your experimental needs. In this way, you can accurately express the purchase demand and avoid wrong cell purchasing and delivering due to the communication problems. Ubigene has two cell banks, wild-type cell line bank and stable cell line bank. The common information of cell line has been shown in our products webpage, and you can download the introduction for free to view the STR Authentication data of the cell lines, and avoid purchasing or recognizing the wrong cell lines.

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Tip 2: STR Authentication

Many academic journals require researchers to provide STR Authentication results of cell lines in recent years, including NIH, ATCC, Nature and Science.Many researchers use cross-contaminated or misidentified cell lines, resulting in unacceptable results, such as unrepeatable experimental results and negative research conclusions, which means they waste a lot of time for this small error. Especially, it will lead to the serious consequences in clinical cell therapy, just because of the wrong research conclusions.

Cell identification method: STR Authentication is one of the most effective and accurate methods for cell cross-contamination and characteristic identification. Many academic journals require researchers to provide STR Authentication results of cell lines recently. Therefore, it is very necessary to ask whether STR Authentication report is provided and check is the STR Authentication results are true. If the experiments of several months or even years is about to end without STR Authentication, it may lead to the negative conclusion, such as the waste of time and funds, and everything has to start from the beginning. All human and mouse cell lines  in Ubigene’s wild-type cell line bank provide STR Authentication reports for free to ensure cell identity.

Tip 3: Strict QC

First, it is important to know whether cell lines are contaminated by bacteria, fungi and mycoplasma. After mycoplasma contamination, the expression of DNA, RNA and protein in cell lines will change. When the contamination is serious, the cell lines will grow slowly, cause the cell morphology change, and cause the cell pathological changes. Mycoplasma contamination is relatively difficult to deal with. So we should ensure cell lines are not contaminated by mycoplasma when we puchase the cell line.

Secondly, we need to pay attention to the passage level of cell lines. With the increase of passage, cell lines will have problems such as bad growth condition and mutation, unpredictable experiment results, such as changes in protein expression. Try to use low passage, healthy and active cell lines in order to ensure the reliability of experiment.

Ubigene regularly carries out strict microbial detection on all cell lines in our cell bank, and ensures low passage, good cell condition. It is even suitable for cell transfection and antibiotic screening during the experiments, such as gene-editing, stable cell line generation, etc.

Tip 4: Professional technical guidance

When you confirm the above 3 tips, you can ensure that the cell line you purchase is good. Even if unluckily, the cell line is not good from some companies, you can better protect your rights. On the contrary, some researchers purchase the cell lines in good condition, but they can't better culture the cells. They may think it's the problem of the cell lines. And some researchers ask for help about this problem. Some cell lines seem in good condition, but once doing gene-editing, the cell lines may be in bad condition after cell transfection or antibiotic screening due to lack of experience, cell lines are easy to die, the transfection rate is low, or the efficiency of gene-editing is low. Generally, some companies will provide some technical guidance, but it is just about the common culture of cell lines. For more gene-editing experiments, it may be more reliable to find a company specializing in gene-editing services.

Ubigene focuses on providing professional gene-editing services and products. We take the high standard of "suitable for all gene-editing experiments”, and also provides free technical guidance for gene-editing! Make your gene-editing experiment easier!

Ubigene, make genome editing easier!