quick and non-expensive method of testing cross cell contamination? - (Jun/06/2013 )

Hi,

Recently there was a publication that a human cancer cell line we use in the lab is contaminated with mouse cells. Some other cell lines we also use from the same institution we recieved the contaminated cell lines we found were pulled from ATCC web site. We are fearing the worst and want to quickly test all cell lines to check for mouse cell contaminations.

Is there a quick kit or method to test? We were thinking of PCRing a mouse gene or something along those lines. Commercial kits seem very expensive.

Any help would be great.

I already lost half of my data for a paper from losing that cell line. I don't want to lose the other half...

I would test cell specific genes via PCR. I am assuming morphology staining is out of the question? Does one cell line harbor a specific drug resistance?

Edit:
Is there any way you can recover your cells? Do your cells grow in a colony formation that would allow you to transfer a set of cells to a new plate? You may be able to isolate your two different types of cells in this fashion. Just a thought.

jerryshelly1 on Thu Jun 6 21:05:51 2013 said:

we too think the PCR method is the easiest. right now we would like to quickly test for contamination. So colony formation would be thought of if indeed we do have a contamination issue. The paper mentioned that the cell line is 80% mouse cells so it may be tricky.

Is there a good mouse gene that i could use for PCR?

It all depends on the tissue you are working with. A google search pulled up this article, it may help you. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/8/127

jerryshelly1 on Fri Jun 7 15:43:15 2013 said:

thanks for your feedback.
i found this article and is exactly what i needed http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11626-007-9060-2.pdf