cell culture;

or, another one about work

a cell culture dish. it is hot pink.

every two or three days, i tend to my cells. when i say my here, i don't mean the cells that make up my own body; i mean cells that grow in a dish. not mine, but my responsibility.

human cancer cells provide the material for my experiments. cancer grows so aggressively that it will continue to grow even when ripped from the context of the human body. these cells will grow and grow, stuck to the bottom of a plastic dish, feeding on hot-pink, nutrient-rich broth. this tolerance of less-than-natural conditions allows scientists to grow cancer cells in great quantities, to study them under microscopes and in biochemical assays. keeping my cells alive and happy is the most routine part of my job, but i cannot help but feel reverence.

where is the line between protocol and ritual?

  1. take the dish out of the incubator and place it in the laminar flow hood, a clean environment for cell culture work.
  2. remove the old growth media with a vacuum.
  3. rinse the cells with DPBS, a mild salt solution.
  4. remove the solution with the vacuum.
  5. add trypsin, an enzyme that breaks down proteins, and wait. the goal here is to break down only the proteins which attach the cells to the bottom of the dish, releasing them so you can transfer them to a new dish. sometimes a hard knock on the side of the dish is neccessary to set the cells loose. note: if left in trypsin for too long, the cells will die.
  6. dilute the suspended cells in fresh growth media to reduce the rate of the reaction.
  7. if this passage of cells is meant to be used for an experiment, count them with a hemocytometer or an automated system.
  8. add a calculated/approximated amount of the diluted cells to a new culture dish, and fill the remaining volume with more fresh media.
  9. to distribute the cells evenly across the plate, mix by moving the plate side to side. rotate 45 degrees, then mix again. avoid swirling, which causes the cells to collect at the center of the dish.
  10. place the dish into the incubator, which is set to 37°C and 5% CO2.
  11. repeat when the cells run out of room to grow, about every two to three days.