producing cell lines - why viruses ?? (Jan/29/2010 )

Dear all,

i don't know why they put viruses along with cancerous cells ?

are they put to induce cancer at the beginning..
then the cells will keep dividing immortally ???
so when u take for example insulinoma panceriatic cell line we assume that it wasn't cancerous
but induced by the virus ???

or, there is another scenario ??
in that u take an already cancerous cells and then add the virus,
for a reason which i don't know ???

could any one kindly help ??

thanks in advance

Many viruses have the ability to switch off genes that would normally be expressed when the cell is subjected to insult/DNA damage. These genes, such as p53, would normally cause the cells to die through apoptosis. However, without them switched on the cell can survive the DNA damage, and so long as the cell can over come the end-replication problem (telomerase), then the cell can immortalise. The proportion of cells that have a viral transformation happen, even in the lab, is tiny (I think less than 1 in 1000000) - which is why you don't just get cancer from every viral infection you have.

Where you are adding viruses to already immortal cells, it is either to study the virus, or some aspect of the viruses interaction with the cell, or the cellular response to the virus. It isn't necessarily to make the cells immortal.

thanks for the clarified answer bob1
grateful to ur kindness ...

but, i read that the reason is to fuse the cells together,, providing you already took a cancerous cell line...
but am not so relying on the source i read from ...

that's why i turned here, to find an answer ...

do you kindly find that there is a need to fuse the cells in the cell-line ???
or the reason is just as u've specified before ( to study viral particles,,,etc ) ???

thanks for ur time

I don't know of any reason to fuse cells apart from making hybridomas for antibody production. The fusion can be done using viruses apparently, though I have never done it so I haven't check any sources.