You have established a primary culture of ovine endothelial

You have established a primary culture of ovine endothelial cells. During the initial 3 cell passages the cells appear normal, however, on the 8 and 9th passages the cells appear to change morphology by become more fibroblastic in nature. Suggest two different possibilities to account for this behavior and describe how you would test for each.

Solution

The possibility of contamintion of fibroblast in endotheical cells is not inevitable in primary cell culture, if in-experienced person is performing the culture, which is not expected as this therotical question. If this question is by a lab student who is actually perfroming this experiment, then this aspect is utmost important.

The introduction of bFGF(basic fibroblast growth factor) if used in culture might induce such change in cell morphology.

The communication between endotheical is of great significance during angeiogenisis, thus one possible reason of change in behavior could be invovlment of external factors (as component of media or growth factor) which stimulate angiogensis. These factor enhance the modification on cell type depending on original source of origin of cell lineage.

These can be detected by removing various contents from media and check out the growth of cells in each passage. Also, use cell specific marker (antigen- antibody based) to detect the cell type depending on morphology