Like greenhouse gardeners, the cell culturists in the Stowers Tissue Culture Core Laboratory devotedly care for and cultivate a variety of cells and tissues. Many samples harvested from their original environment can be rendered useless unless properly maintained in conditions that closely mimic their native environment. The expert staff diligently maintains incubators stocked full of roller bottles turning slowly at prescribed speeds that optimize the growth of specialized cells. They also tend to flasks filled with nutrients that nourish tissues and ensure maximum growth.

The Tissue Culture team is skilled at producing large-scale expansions of cell lines, generating cells that carry a genetic modification of interest to a researcher, banking cells for future use, and screening incoming samples for invasive forms of bacteria called Mycoplasma.

Tissue Culture by the numbers

247,200
milliliters of media used in the last year 
for roller bottles alone

9,251
vials of cells stored in liquid nitrogen

2,907
vials of cells banked in 2014

1,236
roller bottles cultured each year

1,056
unique cell lines stored in liquid nitrogen

426
orders of cell line 293T fulfilled for researchers
in the last year

126
genetically modified cell lines generatedin 2014

23
labs requested cultured cells in 2014

9
cell culture specialists

7
days of the week the laboratory is operating