Antibiotic Concentration - (May/15/2010 )

What is the optimal penicillin/streptomycin and gentamycin media concentrations when culturing immortalized cell lines (MCF-7 breast cancer cells, SNO oesophageal cancer cells, etc?) Is 10% too much? What could possibly happen to the cells should the antibiotic concentration be too high?

I used 1% of 10,000U Pen/10,000 ug Strep. I didn't use gentamycin.

Too much can kill them, so do titrations to determine the minimum amount required to kill the untransformed cells. If you use the minimum inhibitory concentration, you won't harm your cells but will keep contaminants at bay.

DON"T USE ANTIBIOTICS!!

The use of antibiotics for routine culture masks cryptic infections that will otherwise become apparent very quickly. With good technique you should not have to use antibiotics at all (apart from keeping the plasmids in stably transfected cells).