Why You Need To Know About Tissue Culture Preservation

Did you know that even if you’re not a microbiologist, it is quite important that you know some valuable information about the preservation of tissue cultures? Technology made us believe that anything can be done in the research and medical fields with the use of this type of preservation. To know why you should know more about this topic, just read along.

Body tissues have been preserved since time immemorial. Tissue cultures are done by artificially growing the different cells or tissues apart from the organism of source in a growth medium. Usually, tissue cultures are done in broth or even agar media. This can be done in both animal and plant tissues. Most of the time, tissues grown in cultures need to be preserved for future study. The significance of preserving tissues has been imperative because of so many reasons. Usually, researchers need preserved tissue cultures to be used in their studies of tissues for future use. Tissue cultures are also needed by students for the study of different structures in application of their lessons.

Vaccines have already been developed because of the success of tissue cultures. The studies made by researchers usually would necessitate the studying of different tissue structures over and over to discover reasons for certain diseases, new cures for diseases, tissue structures and their functions, evolution, etc.

Since tissue cultures are made of live cells, when the cells have multiplied, the cells could either die because of nutrient depletion. Because of this, there is a reason to make sure that the tissues are well preserved and cultures are done using the sterile technique. Sterile techniques prevent the growth and contamination of unwanted bacteria that could lead to cell death. One way of doing the sterile technique is the use of a laminar flow cabinet or a biosafety hood and antibiotics on the growth medium to prevent bacterial growth. Changing the medium can also replenish the nutrients for tissue growth and prevent the building up of metabolic byproducts and cell death. This can be one way of preserving cell cultures.

A well-balanced salt solution is one preservative to maintain a tissue culture. Liquid nitrogen is one of the most widely-used chemicals that is used for tissue culture preservation. Freezing cells is another way by suspending the tissue in 90% of calf serum with 10% DMSO. Then the cells are kept in freezer vials on top of ice. This will then be contained in a Mr. Frosty container that is frozen at -70 EC in a freezer overnight. The next day it will be transferred to liquid nitrogen after a day.

There are different freezing techniques used to preserve tissue cultures. Slow-freezing has been used for preserving sperm and embryos. This is what technology calls cryopreservation to help mothers who cannot bear children conceive. This is one of the reasons why preserving tissue cultures very exciting. However, it is important to remember that preserving tissue cultures through freezing should necessitate the addition of certain chemicals to still maintain the viability of the cells and not kill them by freezing.

In slow freezing, what is done is that the control-rate freezer would decrease in temperature by one degree centigrade for every minute. This makes it a slow process which is actually very good for simple tissues like sperm, blood or embryos. However, this may not apply to more complex structures like ovarian tissue. The ice could actually destroy the cells.

A more important issue now arise, if tissues can be preserved to do all these things, is it possible to preserve organs as well for the use in emergency medical situations? With the advent of cryopreservation, it is not impossible that scientists can come up with organ banking where organs of deceased patients may donate their organs to these “banks” that can serve to be beneficial to others later on.

Another great idea is to use the same cryopreservation technique to preserve stem cells, one of the best discoveries in medical history. Stem cells are discovered to be self-renewing and can develop into any kind of adjacent tissue it is deposited in. That simply means that any damaged tissues in the body may be replaced by stem cells which could later on develop into cells just like the ones that have been damaged that are fully functional.

Now that we have seen the importance of knowing about tissue culture preservation, it would help to know more about the latest in this field of science to keep ourselves updated. It is truly a wonderful thing, the discovery of tissue culture preservation.