Weekly cell culture mission

Cell growth & its confluency forms an essential part of cell culture labs. The confluency refers to the percentage of the culture dish that the adherent cells cover. We use this as a guide to determine if the cells are ready to be passaged (removal & transfer of cells to fresh growth medium), so that they can propagate further or be used for experiments. ⠀
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During cell growth in culture, the cells will undergo 3 phases, ⠀
i) the lag phase: where there’s a slow growth, ⠀
ii) the logarithm phase: where the cells grow exponentially & ⠀
iii) the stationary phase: where the cells slow down or stop growing because of a lack of nutrients.⠀
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Using cells at different confluency and different growth phases can affect the reproducibility of results! This is why the cells require very much of our attention.