what is a seed trainwhat is a seed culturewhy not inoculate

what is a seed train?what is a seed culture?why not inoculate directly into the largest volume bioreactor?

Solution

The seed train helps to generate an adequate number of cells for the inoculation of a production bioreactor and this process is considered as time- and cost-intensive. The seed train scale is then used to inoculate the bioreactor.

The \"seed train process\" is a multi-step method, here the starting number of cells in first cell culture is expanded into an N- 1 cell culture, so that we can inoculate sufficient number of cells in the typical production bioreactor.

In seed culture, cells are not replicated, but they are grown so that they should not lose their characteristics. Using the appropriate growth medium and factors, the characteristics of the cells are preserved. Here the culturing will be done on small scale, so that it can be used to inoculate small volume bioreactors.

Setting up a large bioreactor is a tedious and money consuming process and it is wise not to inoculate directly into a largest volume bioreactor. First we need to inoculate the seed culture in the small bioreactor (for example 2L/5L/10L) and then by assessing the growth of these cells in this bioreactor, we can transfer them to the largest volume bioreactor. If cells inoculated directly in largest bioreactor are unable to grow or distribute themselves, then the whole batch has to be discarded.