limiting dilution assay - what's this??? (Oct/18/2006 )

Hi all,

I am reading some papers on ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem cells, and found many paper use limiting dilution assay to evaluate the repopulating ability of hematopoietic stem cells. I want to know what is this assay and how it is performed... Many thx!!

Hi, there.

The limiting dilution assay consists of plating a very limited number of cells (very diluted) in a Petri dish to several purposes, for example to isolate a single or few cells after a transfection assay from a non-positive colony of transfected cells (after disperse them, of course), or to evaluate the growth capabilities of a cell type- if cells have a good performance in proliferation you'll probably obtain a culture of 'clones' of the few cells you plated at the begining.

I hope it helps you.

Hi, there.

The limiting dilution assay consists of plating a very limited number of cells (very diluted) in a Petri dish to several purposes, for example to isolate a single or few cells after a transfection assay from a non-positive colony of transfected cells (after disperse them, of course), or to evaluate the growth capabilities of a cell type- if cells have a good performance in proliferation you'll probably obtain a culture of 'clones' of the few cells you plated at the begining.

I hope it helps you.