INFECTION! - (Nov/14/2005 )

Gahhhh. After working long and hard on making a stable cell line I have a bacterial infection in the LAST passage before putting in liquid N2. It appears to have come from whoever aliquoted the FCS. BOOOOOOOO!

Anyways, the cells are still alive, and in 7.5% FCS +pen/strep. Can I add something like tetracyclin or ampicillin to get rid of the bacteria? I don't have the time to go back to redo the stable. Anyone???? Any help would be appreciated.

You should first make sure it is a bacterial infection and not a yeast infection. Secondly, you maybe able to clone out cells in a 96 well plate in the presence of antibiotic and cure the infection. Just wash the cells many times and dilute the cells in a large volume of medium. There is no guarantee this will work, but it may depending on the type and severity of the infection you have. You should have a dedicated hood, reagents, incubator for this because it is not good to keep stuff like this around the lab.

edit to add: You may also want to try out several types of antibiotics in different wells.