Cell culture shared with yeast? - (Mar/16/2012 )

Greetings,

I have a subject on which I´d like to hear your comments and advice. It may seem pretty outrageous to some...

We have a cell culture lab, and we have a new professor. He works with yeast (cryptococcus). Since there´s nowhere else for him to work, it has been decided that he can share the cell culture lab (flow hood, incubators, the works)!

How does BioForum feel about this?

I´ve strongly expressed my opposition, but was firmly ignored. The decision has been made by people who don´t work with mammalian cells.

Am I over-reacting? Will it all be cool? I´d appreciate some comments, and if you think the idea is dumb, some knockout arguments that will help me get this decision reversed.

Thanks!

no I don't think you're over reacting. I almost had the same situation where my boss has microbiology-related project. I made a stern statement to my PI that I did not want any bacteria-related stuff in the cell culture area. My biggest worry is bacteria contamination due to poor aseptic technique or other blunders. If one is super careful then may be things might turn alright, but people make mistakes esp. when they are newly trained or when tired. I don't think therefore that it's worth the risk. If the cell line is something you can buy then it will cost a couple of hundreds to get a fresh start up and at least few weeks before you can have enough cells to generate data. If the cell line has unique characteristic that you/others developed and can't be bought commercially and it gets contaminated then research comes to a potentially long halt. so.. I agree with your position.. I think you need to stand your ground.

iFred on Fri Mar 16 18:52:29 2012 said:

Dear iFred,

I have 2 true stories for you in relation to this:-

Many years ago we had a problem with yeast contamination in our cell cultures. We had a communal facility used by many and we kept getting yeast in our cells. It turned out that one member of staff was baking her own bread at home....and this was the cause of all our problems. She stopped baking baking....the problem disappeared overnight. The moral of the story is that it is extremely easy to cross contaminate with yeast

second story.......for many years we had a grant for work relating to the interaction of Salmonella with Eukaryotic cells (macrophages). I used to grow the J774 murine macrophages in the same class II cabinet and CO2 incubator (in the same room). I never got any cross contamination of bacteria in the cell cultures. The moral of this story is that it is easy, when using good aseptic technique, to grow bacteria in cell culture facilities....it is not ideal but it can be done.

The professor in my opinion KNOWS BETTER and is just trying it on....as he does not have his own facility. Some say it would be crass stupidity......however most professor's i've met do not like being called STUPID. They have wonderful ideas that you and me would never have BUT do not have the practical/technical skills that are required to PUT THEIR IDEAS INTO WORKING PRACTICE.


Hope some of this is useful

Kindest regards

Uncle Rhombus (35 years of cell culture experience)