what to add to media - cell culture medium (Jun/09/2005 )

I buy DMEM and RPMI from Invitrogen/Gibco in 500mL bottles. I add serum, pen/strep, and L-glut (when needed) to the media. Do I need to add anything else like nonessential amino acids or sodium pyruvate? I used to make media from powder and added these things, but I assumed they were already in the bottled media.
Thanks.

hi
i'm using DMEM from Gibco and i add nothing else as you mentionned. I mean PS and FBS. Glutamine is contained already in medium

it depends on the cell lines..
for MCF-7 (DMEM) we add Non essential aa, sodium pyruvate, glutamine, insulin, gentamycin, pen-strep and fbs. DMEM has a lot more nutirnts than RPMI.
RPMI we add everything as stated above except NEAA.

hope this helps
p..

I agree it depends on the cell lines.

I've only used DMEM, but for Helas for example, just as you are doing it.

I agree. It depends on the cell lines. To my HEK-293 cell, I add glutamine, p/s, BCS or FBS to the DMEM media.

I would say that it depends on the cell you're dealing with. In my case, I work with endometrium primary cell cultures and culture them in Invitrogen's low-glucose DMEM or RPMI supplemented with FBS, P/S, glutamine, insulin, transferrin, selenium, ascorbic acid... and the list continues!

For my T98G I use EMEM and I add FBS, pen/strep and Non-essential amino acids. It depends on cell line type:)