How stable are suspension cells in room temperature? - (Apr/29/2011 )

Hi,

I was growing some suspension cells in culture (They are a cancer cell line). I left them at room temperature accidentally for 30-45 minutes. I checked them right afterwards and they seemed to be fine under the microscope.

So my question is how stable are suspension cells at room temperature? Should I expect that most of those cells will die?

They should be fine, though there might have been some activation of cold-shock genes which could cause some death potentially.

I would be really surprised if they died off--remember that they were in presumably 37C media, and that would take a while to drop to room temp.