Cloning is used to obtain a stable culture of homogeneous cells. Over periods of many months in tissue culture, cells can change properties due to somatic gene mutation, and overgrowth of mutated cells. It may be desired to select a rare cell type or the few stably transfected cells in a transfection pool. Cloning is achieved by diluting a culture so that ½ the wells in a 96 well plate contain one cell and ½ contain no cells. At this low cell concentration, conditioned medium (medium from the same cell type harvested at high concentrations) may be added to enhance growth. When the clone reaches suitable numbers, aliquots are frozen in order to retrieve cells with the same properties at a future date.

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