Question

Biology and characterization of cultured cells: cell morphology, cell adhesion, cell proliferation, cell differentiation

Answer 1

The human brain is the central organ of the human nervous system, and with the spinal cord makes up the central nervous system. The brain consists of the cerebrum, the brainstem and the cerebellum. It controls most of the activities of the body, processing, integrating, and coordinating the information it receives from the sense organs, and making decisions as to the instructions sent to the rest of the body. The brain is contained in, and protected by, the skull bones of the head. The cerebrum is the largest part of the human brain. It is divided into two cerebral hemispheres. The cerebral cortex is an outer layer of grey matter, covering the core of white matter. The cortex is split into the neocortex and the much smaller allocortex. The neocortex is made up of six neuronal layers, while the allocortex has three or four. Each hemisphere is conventionally divided into four lobes – the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes. The frontal lobe is associated with executive functions including self-control, planning, reasoning, and abstract thought, while the occipital lobe is dedicated to vision. Within each lobe, cortical areas are associated with specific functions, such as the sensory, motor and association regions. Although the left and right hemispheres are broadly similar in shape and function, some functions are associated with one side, such as language in the left and visual-spatial ability in the right. The hemispheres are connected by commissural nerve tracts, the largest being the corpus callosum.

Human brain

Answer 2

Primary cell cultures can be established by a process called trypsinization, which after several passages develops into a cell line. This cell line is more stable and further develops into a continuous cell line which is considered an essential requirement for production of recombinant proteins. Mammalian cell size is 10–100 times larger than that of microorganisms and most importantly, mammalian cells lack a cell wall, thus are highly sensitive against hydrodynamic sheer forces. Moreover, silent contaminants such as mycoplasma affect cell growth in a surprising manner. One more stringent problem is lacking understanding of regulation of metabolites and catabolites in animal cell cultures. Different forms of substrates can be utilized for anchorage dependent cells, whereas anchorage independent cells can be cultured in stirred bioreactors. Additional growth parameters such as pH and temperature can be regulated so as to get high cell density and viability. All these parameters can be evaluated by using different techniques such as DNA fingerprinting, DNA hybridization, chromosomal analysis (chromosome painting, chromosome banding), comparative genomic hybridization (CGH), fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), flow cytometry, stem cell array, pluripotency markers (protein), single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis, immunostaining and antigenic markers.