Dead cell removal -why? - (Aug/28/2006 )

I know that this might sound a bit stupid question but I have to ask I'm making an essay and I'm trying to resolve all cases where you have to remove dead cells.

Why do you have to remove dead cells from cell cultures/tissue cells/before and after transfection etc.? And what are the benefits for doing it compared to if you don't do it.

Are dead cells of any value to the gene expression levels that you are looking for?

for protein purification for ex, dead cells are not producing your protein, but you have to get rid of their proteins.
For RNA prep, the dead cells usually shows very bad quality of RNA, and before entering death, the have an increase in RNAse content (and DNAse content as well). So for genral quality of your prep, it's not appropriate to have dead cells.
General Protein levels are modified in dead cells as well so not suitable for western blot / RTPCR etc... experiments

i'm not sure, but i think lysozymes start to do their job: lysing dead cells and this may affect neighboring viable cells