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Science 30 January 1959:
Vol. 129. no. 3344, pp. 252 - 254
DOI: 10.1126/science.129.3344.252
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Articles

Requirements for Growth of Single Human Cells

"Nonessential" amino acids, notably serine, are necessary and sufficient nutritional supplements

Royce Z. Lockart Jr. 1 and Harry Eagle 2

1 National Research Council postdoctoral fellow.
2 Staff of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., in the section on experimental therapeutics.

A minimal growth medium supplemented with dialyzed serum, which sufficed for the propagation of a wide variety of human cell strains in heavily inoculated monolayer and suspension cultures, did not permit the regular or optimal growth of small numbers of HeLa, HeLa S3, conjunctiva, or KB cells deriving from suspension cultures. At threshold concentrations of serum, the plating efficiency of single cells was greatly reduced as compared with their plating efficiency in a medium containing dialyzed serum instead of whole serum, and the clones which did develop grew at a slower rate. The nutritional deficiency could be overcome by adding the seven amino acids which are ordinarily not nutritionally essential. In most of the experiments serine alone sufficed.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Metabolic Controls in Cultured Mammalian Cells: Cultured cells may provide a direct approach to regulation and function in the whole animal.
H. Eagle (1965)
Science 148, 42-51
   Abstract »    PDF »
Amino Acid Metabolism in Mammalian Cell Cultures.
H. Eagle (1959)
Science 130, 432-437
   PDF »


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