30 Days of Science Education: An Introduction to Cell Passaging

October 31st, 2013 4 min read Phil Meagher
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Thank you for checking out our “30 days of Science Education” series. Use Science Education videos to introduce undergraduates to the lab. 

HeLa is the oldest and perhaps most famous immortal cell line used in scientific research today. Taken from a cervical cancer lesion biopsied from Henrietta Lacks in 1951, the cell line is still growing—even though Lacks died that same year.

Stem cell colonies grown on feeder cells need to be “picked” once they’ve reached the proper stage of development.
Stem cell colonies grown on feeder cells need to be “picked” once they’ve reached the proper stage of development.

In this Science Education video, we present the method that has helped proliferate the HeLa cell line over the last 60 years: cell passaging.

Passaging, or subculturing cells is a common procedure wherein cells from a single culture are divided and moved onto separate substrates to facilitate their growth in the lab. In this video we review exactly what a cell line is, how to perform passaging cells step-by-step, and then—as is the case with all of our Science Education videos—we present five real-world applications of the technique from some of the world’s top-tier institutions.

Cell Passagin
Depending on the cell type, most adherent cells need to be passaged when they are 70-90% confluent, that is, when they cover 70-90% of the culture container surface.

The standard method of cell passaging is an important component in even very complex experiments. In the Boston University Medical Center’s “Generation of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells from Peripheral Blood Using the STEMCCA Lentiviral Vector,” for example,  researchers rely on cell passaging to expand cell cultures in there work turning somatic cells (adult cells from the body) into embryonic stem cell alternatives for research in regenerative medicine.

Phil Meagher
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