lymphoblasts - (Jan/17/2006 )

hi everybody

I wonder what is the stability of ebv immortalized lymphoblasts? how reliable they are on long term?

thanks

Banar

Hi Banar,
I used to work with EBV lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs). We were working on EBV so my understanding was their expression of EBV latent genes was stable. We had cultured them for long periods of time and they were still viable. Obviously you can't do that with primary B-cells. If you mean the stability of the cellular phenotype that is changed by infecting primary B-cells with EBV to produce the LCL, which up-regulating adhesion molecules, surface markers etc. So it depends what you mean by stability.

All the best,
Ceri