DMSO Vehicle control - (Sep/20/2008 )

Hello,

I've been reading up on some articles and most of them mention about using DMSO as vehicle control. What does this exactly means?

Can anyone explain?

Thank you for your attention.

Morphie

when you want to treat cells with a chemical, you first have to dissolve this chemical. Not all chemicals are soluble in water, so sometimes people have to use DMSO as a solvent. The disadvantage is that DMSO might also have an effect on your cells, so to take this into consideration, you should always have a control setting where you treat the cells with everything but the chemical, so in this case with just the DMSO. The effects you observe in the treated cells will then most likely be due to the chemical and not to the solvent/vehicle.