Use of antibiotics in cell culture? - (Jul/04/2006 )

do you use antibiotics as a preventive measure of contaminations in your cell culture media

Dear Shiva,

You seem to have taken my comments personally which they were not intended to do. I am sure your poll will reveal a large majority of cell culturist's using antibiotics routinely. However all good reference books will have copious amounts of text telling the reader to use antibiotics sparingly

Culture of Animal Cells by R.Ian Freshney is a bible for cell culture.

"Grow cultures in the absence of antibiotics to allow CRYPTIC contaminations to become overt"

My PI insists on antibiotics always. Even in my old lab, this was the practice.

hi rhombus its just a survey ! not too serious about it

I always used antibiotics (& antifungals). Now, I think I'd try without. I used various agonists to check surface receptor expression (I was working on cell signalling mechanisms). In a shared incubator I'm always scared that someone introduces contamination. I'm about to start working on erythrocytes and haven't decided on antibiotics yet.

i always add the antibody because i am not sure if something i do not know harm my cell