Hep G2s revisited - (Apr/25/2005 )

Can anyone tell me what the brightly reflective inclusion bodies are in our Hep G2 cells? An old flask, not fed for 10 days, does not have them, but new flasks fed 5 days ago do. We are using MEM/10% FCS/l-glut/Pen-Strep. I have included a picture, 40x, with the cells not quite in focus, but the inclusion bodies are. We only see this in the monolayer cultures, not in the cells grown as spheroids. Could it be lipids? glycogen? early apoptosis? Thanks for any help, Christy

Hi.

You can try with red-oil assay to determine if these are lipid vacuoles (it is really fast).

Also, try not to use old L-Glut, as it is really sensitive to degradation. Some times, vacuoles are due to a nutrient defficiency.

see you.