Mysterious cell death - need Hela Help! - (Jan/12/2010 )

I grew some Helas in a 24 well plate in 10% FCS overnight and once confluent I replaced the growth medium with exactly all the same ingredients except for 1%FCS instead of 10% as I was going to run an experiment on them during the week. This used to be fine until a couple of months ago when everytime I replaced the growth medium with the maintenance medium, all the cells in the middle seem to all die and float while the cells on the edges are still OK. They still grow fine with the 10% FCS and all the rest of the stuff come from the same source so I'm not totally sure what's going on here! Can anyone help me?

Thanks

If I remember right Hela cells have a very quick doubling time. I think that the 1% is not enough serum for them. They are probably chewing through all their "food" too fast. I would be going up in FCS concentration unless you are testing serum starvation or doing a transfection.

Peanut on Jan 12 2010, 11:16 PM said:

I grew some Helas in a 24 well plate in 10% FCS overnight and once confluent I replaced the growth medium with exactly all the same ingredients except for 1%FCS instead of 10% as I was going to run an experiment on them during the week. This used to be fine until a couple of months ago when everytime I replaced the growth medium with the maintenance medium, all the cells in the middle seem to all die and float while the cells on the edges are still OK. They still grow fine with the 10% FCS and all the rest of the stuff come from the same source so I'm not totally sure what's going on here! Can anyone help me?

Thanks