Biology's Huge, Microscopic Problem

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Petri dishes contaminated with the wrong cell lines have compromised thousands of studies, leaving us with questionable treatments for a variety of diseases. How do we solve this enormous, microscopic problem?
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Sources:
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Опубликовано:

10 апр 2023

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Комментарии : 763

@SciShow Год назад

Head to linode.com/scishow to get a $100 60-day credit on a new Linode account. Linode offers simple, affordable, and accessible Linux cloud solutions and services.

@ybemad Год назад

I know it probably felt uncomfortable or clumbsy to point out, but it is very important to point out that Henrietta Lacks was a Black Woman Hank. It's pretty clear that if she had not been Black, HeLa cells would not have existed in the way we know.

@soundspark Год назад

@@ybemad What does this have to do with Linode?

@sIosha Год назад

I can always count on scihow to bring me the latest existential crisis

@twosquids Год назад

I'm not panicking you're panicking DO I SOUND LIKE I'M PANICKING

@sep27061985 Год назад

you might like exurb1a :)

@F_L_U_X Год назад

Welcome to life.

@awkwurdtalke-gamesandgamer8236 Год назад

Are your cells even your cells?

@FirstLast-di5sr Год назад

Better to know than not 🤷‍♂️

@Al-cynic Год назад

worked for a few weeks in a 'clean' lab with lots of protocols, boss of the lab used to swan in and out without following any of the protocols, even came in with an executive group all holding coffee mugs and he was eating a sandwich. Wonder how clean labs become contaminated?

@CrackBaby3 Год назад

That's crazy. I work in a lab right now, and surprisingly, everyone seems to follow protocol. Makes sense, though. Our swipes come up contaminated with tuberculosis or Zika, HSV, and others every now and then. Def don't want to eat a sandwich around that!

@koharumi1 Год назад

Swan?

@spindash64 Год назад

Ngl, I would have lasted maybe a week before attempting to physically remove him from the lab

@shanleyshoupe7873 Год назад

@@koharumi1 to walk in a carefree fashion, kinda like traipse or jaunt

@Al-cynic Год назад

@@PretendingToBeAHuman i was 'MIFE' (Micro Electrode Ion Flux estimation),ing cells as a side project, to see what the K+ Ca+, Na+ response was to a new drug, just doing the journey work, so (hate to say it) not my problem, mentioned it, no response.

@fakjbf3129 Год назад

In a sense, the HeLa cell line has become so good at infecting other cell lines that it should almost be thought of as an independent organism unto itself. It would be fascinating to compare these current cells to frozen samples of the original cell line from all those decades ago, because they’ve probably undergone at least some level of natural selection to evolve better ways of contaminating and taking over other petri dishes. This would certainly make it the most interesting species of hominid on record.

@3OHT. Год назад

I vote we name the organism Henrietta Lacks

@napajwolf13 Год назад

Like that dog that only exist as cancer in other dogs now

@user-nk8xg4rl2l Год назад

Well there is a cancer in dogs that is transmitted sexually, originating in a dog some thousands of years ago and adapting to infect others. So HeLa could eventually do the same thing.

@3OHT. Год назад

@@user-nk8xg4rl2l Tasmanian Devils also have something quite like this happening to them, in the form of tumours. Devil facial tumour disease.

@fakjbf3129 Год назад

@@3OHT. Currently we know of “Canine transmissible venereal sarcoma” in dogs, “Contagious reticulum cell sarcoma” in Syrian hamsters, “Devil facial tumor disease” in Tasmanian devils, and there are several contagious cancers among various bivalves and some of these can even infect multiple species.

@billyjones9907 Год назад

I tried to grow monkey kidney cells for my students for a lab course. I gained a new found respect and hatred for yeast. No matter how hard we tried aseptic techniques, the yeast would take over in about 4 days. This was at a community college in the United States so we didn't have the best lab layout or equipment. Luckily the yeast were morphologically different enough that we could tell the difference.

@ryaneylee Год назад

sounds like it wasn't done in a cleanroom lab? there's just way too many yeast spores in unfiltered air.

@billyjones9907 Год назад

@@ryaneylee Correct. Very far from a clean room. The college had turned a storage room into a general purpose lab. We didn't even have positive pressure hoods. All were negative pressure. Luckily most experiments took less than 48 hours.

@fluffysheap Год назад

At least you could make monkey sourdough

@billyjones9907 Год назад

@@fluffysheap 😂 Mmmhh..tasty!

@ryaneylee Год назад

@@jakesmerth1919 i see, you come from an area where community colleges are high schools that cannot afford simple modular cleanroom labs/booths (not that surprising, given what I heard of education funding in the US; i'm not from the US). or afford teachers who can teach basic civility and decency. poor you. I just never heard of attempting cell culture outside of cleanrooms, and I don't even major in the life sciences, thus my surprise at OP's attempt to do cell culture outside of one.

@tigereyemusic Год назад

The other thing people often forget is that cells mutate and change over time. We recently did a bunch of testing to find out what the problem was with our cell line - our first thought was contamination by another very similar cell line we also worked with, but it turned out to be a different spontaneous mutation in the gene we were looking at, that made the cells grow faster than the original cells, and outcompete those without the mutation. We ended up having to order a new batch of the cells we needed and re-run some experiments.

@jem5636 Год назад

Yeah, at a talk with a cancer specialist she said that one line after a certain amount of time would just create crazier and crazier mutations, while another just... gave up at some point, slowing in division. Cell lines are neat.

@hugo12345811 Год назад

Love this video!! I work in an undergrad cancer research lab and I noticed earlier this year while looking through a cell database (shout-out to cellosaurus) that one of the cancer cell lines we were using was actually not cancerous at all! My professor didn't even know and I had to send him a couple of papers to prove it to him and show him that we needed a different approach!

@1224chrisng Год назад

so this other cell line mutated and out-reproduced your cancer cell line? does that make it cancer-cancer?

@pathologicaldoubt Год назад

As a cancer survivor, thank you for your diligence 🙏

@tessiepinkman Год назад

From someone who's lost the most important person in my life to cancer (and most women on both sides of my biological family died from some kind of cancer - ergo; I'm basically counting on getting some sort one day) - THANK YOU for what you're doing and your sharp eyes and mind, thank your professor from me for listening to you, and I wish you very good luck in life, wherever it may take you.

@hrigsby6784 Год назад

See: Lymphoma Factsbook (yes, one word, it was originally published in German) for some crazy "all these cell lines are actually the same cell line" discoveries. Also, working with lines needs to implement a mycoplasma testing habit

@carlangaz007 Год назад

You might have inadvertently saved lives... Good job

@ericgillespie2812 Год назад

Fun fact. There is more of Henrieta cells alive today than when she was alive.

@mfaizsyahmi Год назад

They couldn't keep her cancer under control. Now she takes cell line research out of control.

@ivanborsuk1110 Год назад

It is estimated that total weight of all the Henrietta cells ever grown exceeds 50 million metric tons. This makes her fattest human in history of mankind.

@blksmagma Год назад

@WholeWheat KittyFeet No just you.

@guifdcanalli Год назад

@WholeWheat KittyFeet dude wtf

@pisscow6395 Год назад

@@ivanborsuk1110 Yo mama so fat, her cells spread across the entire earth

@saraprior1475 Год назад

My PhD project was impacted by this. My cells were supposed to be neck cancer...nope HeLa. Fortunately it was early enough in the project that I didnt lose much time changing to a different model. This was around 2010. The 'HeLa bomb' was just starting to be talked about then.

@easonred57 Год назад

In my lab we verify our cell lines with STR testing. We have caught so many contaminants that way, and it allows the researcher to have more confidence in the cell line they're using if the frozen stocks have been verified!

@theundone777 Год назад

This is another reason that reproducibility should be demonstrated for these studies by outside labs. Reproducibility is one of the core tenets of the scientific method. It's less likely that the same rogue cells would take over for different studies in different labs by different researchers.

@Mr.Anders0n_ Год назад

Yeah but they may not reach the reproducibility stage since their research is likely to fail with containmented cells. medical research is expensive and other companies/labs aren't likely to attempt to replicate failed attempts

@melody3741 Год назад

They are taking over where the cells are being manufactured. If you have a cell line you are getting it from the same place every time.

@jandoel Год назад

I wouldn't be surprised if the labs s were using the exact same cell lines

@theundone777 Год назад

@@melody3741 yikes, I missed that.

@jonathanodude6660 Год назад

when you reproduce an experiment with cell lines, you take your sample, split it into multiple samples, freeze some and split others and do experiments on those. when you have finished your experiments (which have a control and replicates from the second split) and you want to reproduce them, you take some of the frozen ones and you redo the experiment. if your starting sample is contaminated, then "reproducing" will not help you.

@eleanorbanwell3478 Год назад

I remember when I learned the history of HeLa cells. I’d already been a researcher using them for at least five years when an older (male) post doc mentioned it. The story is certainly not universally known, but it does get shared informally as ethically important context for us to know. I’m grateful for that conversation.

@cyanofelis Год назад

I'm kind of horrified it wasn't mentioned in your curriculum.

@bannor99 Год назад

I can't believe this is still being talked about & isn't widely known. This has been a known problem since the 1970s & was written about in Science Magazine in 1982.

@khills Год назад

Yep. Just look at all the people commenting who didn’t know. 🤷🏼‍♀️

@aprildawnsunshine4326 Год назад

This actually makes a lot of sense to me, as basically a professional patient for the last 20yrs. I've seen so many "promising, well researched" new treatments at best fail to do anything and at worst make my friends worse. There are of course many other problems with the development of medicine, especially for chronic health conditions, but I'm not in the least bit surprised. We need to change how we do the research but also in how we reward the work done too. As it is now, even with all the best guidelines and regulations, there's still a strong incentive to publish "positive" results and punishment for not doing so quickly and cheaply enough and we need to move to a system that rewards accuracy over anything else.

@Erik-pu4mj Год назад

If I became a scientist and made a known and preventable mistake on a highly cited piece of research I did... I'd feel humiliated. It's difficult for me to understand why labs aren't taking every precaution _because_ their research is so expensive. If it goes wrong, all that funding could be wasted. And if nothing else, I would expect any biology publisher to require such vital verification. They have a reputation to uphold, too.

@huntercollum869 Год назад

Because it literally doesn't matter? Like half of the population vehemently believes that Pfizer and the other major drug companies are selling snake oil for covid vaccines and it hasn't hurt their income at all. Why would they do more than they need to to stay profitable?

@TheCatvolador Год назад

Because it's expensive, and funding may be great for some labs, but doing this kind of tests may be easy, but not cheap. And with many countries lowering science funding due to pandemic related economic reasons, it's harder every day. You do what you can with what you have.

@TheCatvolador Год назад

Research is seen as expensive, but scientists constantly need to cut corners so they can stay afloat. If you want to blame anyone about that, probably blame politicians and their voters that think of scientists as pompous elites overflowing with money, which couldn't be further from the truth for the majority of us.

@vikameow Год назад

because money. literally just money.

@SheLikesLoons Год назад

because scientists are no different than politicians. its all about money

@jeanjaz Год назад

The biography of Henrietta Lacks is very sad and will make you angry and disgusted. The larger issues that were very wrong wouldn't happen today, but the lesser issues still can occur. It's good to be aware so you can guard against them in your own life and family - even if you aren't poor and black. I highly recommend reading the book.

@andan2293 Год назад

What so sad and angering about it? People die of cancer every day, they just don't have books written about them.

@byrlink Год назад

@@andan2293 Go read the book and then comment.

@mynt4033 Год назад

It amazes me no company has done a public charity or outreach fund to help her family whos living in poverty to this day. That'd be good PR

@twisted202 Год назад

@@andan2293 The wild disrespect the medical establishment had for a woman of color in the late 40s and early 50s, paired with nobody asking her, her estate, or even notifying her estate a generation later, was grossly improper, and should never happen again if we all can avoid it. Her cancer cells were cared for while they *refused to ethically treat* her cervical cancer. They let her die. They kept what was killing her alive for 70+ years to come.

@mj.l Год назад

@@andan2293 hopefully you'll be one of them

@lordelliott42 Год назад

That's like an engineer trying to test lithium batteries but working from a box that someone mixed nickel cadmium batteries into and they're all unlabeled AA sized cells. Just dumb. Your work is meaningless if you're not even checking your materials.

@phillipwerner3476 Год назад

Thank you for doing a show on WSU-CLL Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. I have this kind of cancer and receive IV-IG infusions once a month. Plus, I have a CT scan every six months. About 50% of the time, the infusions have adverse effects, which last for a couple of days. Almost all of the time, I take mild pain medication along with Tylenol and Imbruvica. Thanks again for taking the time and effort to put together this show.

@adisario Год назад

What about the lost opportunity cost when studying the wrong cell lines? Avenues that might have panned out are excluded and never checked again.

@squirlmy Год назад

although, that happens under the best of circumstances. It happens when studying the "right" cell lines, too. Don't go to far down the rabbit hole unless you have some specific solutions!

@conlon4332 Год назад

I know, I was thinking about that. I suppose really when it's discovered that a cell line has been contaminated, they should redo all the studies that used it. However, obviously that would be a lot easier said than done.

@matthburdett Год назад

That's actually crazy! I work in a molecular lab, and I'd have thought that cell culture labs are just as cautious to contaminants as we are!

@definingstyle145 Год назад

Possibly stupid, beginner question: I thought when cells divide they could possibly change (kind of like evolution--i think they can even become cancerous), so even if we're sure it's the correct cell line, how can we be sure they're "normal" cells?

@therongjr Год назад

We don't always know that. To be perfectly sure, a lab might genotype their cells both before and after an experiential just to confirm. (I work with viruses, and sometimes we do this to make sure something hasn't mutated halfway through in a way we weren't expecting.)

@SAHooplah Год назад

This is actually a commonly addressed problem in cell bio research. These cell lines generally only have so many cycles of division in them before they go senescent or accumulate too many genetic mutations. Therefore, labs will have a large stock of cells in liquid nitrogen at what we call a low “passage number” - basically ones that haven’t divided much. Then you track how many divisions the culture you’re working with has gone through, and throw them out when they come to your limit and start fresh with a new tube. Actually not a stupid question at all!

@definingstyle145 Год назад

@@therongjr Thank you. As a former accountant, I understand that that might require extra expense, but it sounds important. Hopefully, any such changes will be discovered by further testing, but I guess those studies could still be cited.

@waterunderthebridge7950 Год назад

You also keep track of how long a cell line is in use by passage numbers (how many times the cells were transferred into new plates). In order to reduce variability for e.g. genetically changed cell lines, you may also generate isogenic cell lines (which are cell lines derived from the original cell line where every cell shows the same genetic makeup) so that genetic drift becomes less pronounced

@Xerrash Год назад

Cosmic rays can "bit flip" the dna of a cell, causing it to potentially change it's behaviour unless it is repaired.

@klaske2998 Год назад

When I saw the title, I thought this was going to be about mycoplasma. That's another thing you have to check frequently!

@khills Год назад

Came up lots in commentary between the team. 😊

@conlon4332 Год назад

What's that about?

@khills Год назад

@@conlon4332 It’s a bacteria that’s a very, very common contaminant of cell cultures. It basically renders the information you get from the cultures useless - it can change cell metabolism, screw up chromosomes… mycoplasmas are almost unlimited in possible effects. And the bacteria is trending towards very antibiotic resistant, making it hard to fix a contamination problem.

@lx11x Год назад

@@conlon4332 mycoplasma contamination is frequently found in cell culture, it's a type of bacteria that doesn't have a rigid cell wall and is difficult to detect via microscopy. it's so ubiquitous that even if you order cells from trusted/tried and true/official companies, there's a chance that the stock that they dilute from is contaminated itself because of how widespread it is. it can also come from poor aseptic technique. when your cells are infected with mycoplasma, they grow more slowly and can exhibit unpredictable behavior.

@shayneweyker Год назад

One thing that could motivate scientists to take all those precautions is random testing for cell contamination by outside observers. Also those submitting papers citing studies invalidated due to cell contamination could have their papers refused publication by the editors/reviewers until the invalidated cites are removed or replaced with citations not on the banlist.

@missl1775 Год назад

Finally, a SciShow video on this topic. It's good to see up to date information on the actual numbers of suspected contaminated samples. I've also never really understood how cell samples got contaminated - when I first learnt about the issue, it implied that even the cells inside a person's body could be infected by this miasma of lab cells. Horrible to contemplate - and not exactly scientifically sound. This was a quick, simple and great explanation of how cell line contamination happens.

@tomhomunculus Год назад

Great video :-) For those curious: HeLa cells weren't just taken without permission, Henrietta Lack's cells made people extravagantly rich while they left her family in poverty. That company still owns the rights to another person's DNA. This is not the worst of what the medical industry has done to black people, but it demonstrates how they view black people as deserving no consideration, of being usable as assets.

@wmdkitty Год назад

They don't see black people as people, even.

@LordZordid Год назад

Don't you mean that in past tense? The world has changed if you haven't noticed. But I guess the mindset hasn't.

@Jimera0 Год назад

@@LordZordid no, the present tense is definitely still correct. There have been improvements to be sure, but there's loads of research showing that medical treatment and outcomes are still significantly worse for black people and other minorities than they are for white people, and that the right to bodily autonomy is unequally applied between said groups as well. On top of that there are many other ways that people of color receive worse treatment from the medical community than whites. If you don't believe me, well, it isn't very hard to find examples of this research.

@rootytootymailbox2043 Год назад

Before HIPPA in the early 2000’s there was no consent needed to study cells removed from your body. Patients never asked after their removed cancer cells in the hope of getting rich off them, they just wanted them gone. No ethical guidelines were crossed when HeLa cells were collected and cultured. This was especially true 70 years ago. H. Lacks had the terrible fortune to have such a bad cancer that the cells truly seem to be immortal. It has nothing with screwing members of a minority race. America has a bad history, no doubt, but in this case racism had nothing to do with it. No one of any race owned or maintained control over their cells once they were removed.

@tesmith47 Год назад

@@LordZordid not really changed a lot, you sound like a white,male APOLOGIST

@BruceNewhouse Год назад

Incredibly important and well-done presentation. Every biological and pharmaceutical lab professor should have their students and apprentices watch it.

@ianlewis3023 Год назад

Contamination of cells lines by other cells lines can be minimised by growing the latest batch the lab received and then storing aliquots in liquid nitrogen. Then if contamination is suspected you can start again, or you can do this regularly whether you suspect the cell line is contaminated or not. Of course this doesn't help if you are supplied with contaminated cell lines to start with. When I worked in Virology from 1973-2011 we mainly used primary monkey kidney cells, MRC5 (a semicontinuous line from human embryo lung) and one or two others. We didn't use HeLa much due to the contamination problem. Where I worked in an NHS diagnostic lab during the latter years, cell culture was largely (and by now totally) replaced by PCR methods for virus identification, which is not only quicker and more accurate but also removes any ethical problems in working with human and animal derived tissue.

@squirlmy Год назад

can you say what "PCR" stands for, so we don't have to do a websearch?

@lx11x Год назад

in my lab, we use cell culture but just for plaque assays and sometimes to extract rna post infection for some transcriptomics work. if we are collecting samples and just looking to detect natural infection, we normally use qRT-PCR (since my lab works with rna viruses) and we are looking into setting up a contract so we can get some equipment to do ddPCR instead, which is so exciting lol

@ianlewis3023 Год назад

@@squirlmy Polymerase chain-reaction. That is the amplification of a short section of DNA using an enzyme known as a polymerase to replicate it over and over again until there are millions more copies than what you started with.

@MrWaterbugdesign Год назад

Just learning about human cell lines existing for decades was worth the listen. Thanks. Hours watching the first 30 seconds of RU-vid dumb as a rock videos and then bang...one where I learn something. I'm going to have a good day.

@karlkomec1427 9 месяцев назад

Agreed! If I’m flopped down with the iPad, weathered in, (Minnesota winter), maybe I should learn something. Thanks SciShow!

@nicksamek12 Год назад

How are these vendors allowed to label the cell line as INT407 when it's indistinguishable from HeLa?

@xyz7572 Год назад

I wonder this too, they’ve essentially admitted that they’re selling HeLa, so why is it okay that they’re knowingly and actively telling people the cell line they’re selling is INT407?

@karimah8687 Год назад

The title of this could of also been: The postmortem revenge of Henrietta Lacks…

@PTRMAN Год назад

Wow! You guys explain such complicated concepts clearly and, surprisingly to me, with humor!! I love Hank's delivery!

@Creator_Nater Год назад

Thanks Hanks. I was worried they’d pushed him out. His videos seem to have a certain... wisdom..

@crimsonraen Год назад

Thanks for the video, this was really fascinating!

@vulpindeiform8363 Год назад

Enjoying the new release times with this channel.

@Gildedmuse Год назад

This is a really terrifying opening for someone with a chronic illness.

@LeoAngora Год назад

I imagine HeLa contamination as the perfect revenge of Henrietta for the things the scientists did to her.

@tessiepinkman Год назад

Me too, if I didn't know it to be true, it sounds like some sort of weird but extremely cool sci-fi revenge - where the person harmed gets even after death by never *truly* dying.

@mushmush4980 Год назад

On one hand, all of modern science depends on her. On the other hand, the family never got one cut of what she was used for so 🤷‍♀️

@maxjoechl5663 Год назад

The scientists were trying to cure her cancer, dude. And you're blaming them for using her biopsy samples in research that could eventually prevent other women from meeting the same fate as Mrs Lacks? Those are some pretty twisted priorities.

@neilkurzman4907 Год назад

What did they do to her? They treated her for cancer unsuccessfully. The taking of the cells didn’t damage her at all.

@catserver8577 Год назад

The scary thing is all human advancement is sliding back due to the humans performing the research, manufacturing, theorizing, procedures becoming unaware of previous important knowledge. The stuff we already "know" is not being taught as thoroughly as when it was discovered, and new things we supposedly "know" are constantly wrong. Every time a doctor says to me "we just don't know why" a symptom or disease exists, I roll my eyes. The answer is probably staring someone in the face every moment of every day.

@timothyoswald8618 Год назад

The book on Henrietta Lacks is truly stupendous. The ethical and human concerns are deeeeeep.

@Rouverius Год назад

Cells taken without consent are now systematical destroying cell research. I mean I've watched scifi/horror movies with worst plot lines.

@FelixTheAnimator Год назад

Helen's Revenge!

@eritain Год назад

@@FelixTheAnimator Hennie's Revenge, really. "Helen Lane" was a pseudonym.

@starrywizdom Год назад

@@eritain @Henscratch Studio Animation Her name is Henrietta Lacks.

@neilkurzman4907 Год назад

The cells were taken with consent. They had no idea that her cancer was special or different. The only thing they didn’t do was ask permission to continue using the sales, or give her money for them. Which would be unheard of at the time.

@ooooneeee Год назад

@@neilkurzman4907 are you like their descendant or why u so defensive of unethical science?

@strawmanfallacy Год назад

Really cool mentioning the HeLa stuff. Not enough people know about it.

@Kurochana Год назад

I didn't know about it, but it was very interesting to learn it. Similar hard to challenge misconceptions crop up in other places like history and social norms for example. Seems like it is very much a human error, especially so in this case... in more ways than one.

@MahlenMorris Год назад

One wonders what successful treatments we could have now that we don't, solely because of these unintended errors.

@AGDinCA Год назад

Interesting! A problem I didn't even know existed; thanks for helping me learn something today. 👍

@PamdaDev Год назад

0:56 "lets explore the answer to that.. ON THOUGHT BUBBLE!!!" Hank... PLEASE would you guys consider a Philosophy Crash Course 2"?? the world could really use it. Thanks for all the amazing work

@khills Год назад

Shhh I’m sneaking as much in to the episodes as I can, but if you TELL him… 😉

@therongjr Год назад

Ah, yes . . . I started doing immunology soon after the great THP-1/Raji cell mixup was identified. Good times, good times!

@iriandia Год назад

This has to be so frustrating if you've done a bunch of research on the wrong cells! Or rather the wrong cells for the problem that you want to be working on.

@Articulate99 Год назад

Always interesting, thanks.

@kninja28 Год назад

You should do a follow up on mycoplasma contamination and how difficult it is to detect. We had to send all our in house cell lines for SEM to verify if they were clean or not. About 65% were not clean. You could also talk about how some researchers use antibiotics which creates a false sense of security and doesn't prevent non-bacterial contamination.

@dsvwtrbeytnryune Год назад

I thought this was going to be about microplasma, but this is worse. Some cell lines also get infected with viruses which are very difficult to get rid of without killing off the cell line.

@LZeugirdor Год назад

This video was super informative.

@MrGksarathy Год назад

As someone doing cell culture work right now, this hasn't been too much of an issue, BUT I do admit to accidentally infecting one knockout line with another and still growing it. They are of the same lineage, but different knockouts, so maybe it's not too bad?

@SAHooplah Год назад

That sounds pretty bad tbh… how will you report that in a manuscript? I bet your PI would just tell you to throw it out and thaw fresh cultures

@MrGksarathy Год назад

@@SAHooplahBoth the contaminating and contaminant are knockout clones generated from the same TNBC parental line, but either way, we already have several other clones to use, so it's not that big a deal. I told my PI, and he basically told me to see how it grew, we can decide whether to use it or not later.

@MariaMartinez-researcher Год назад

(That sounds like the premise of a zombie movie 😂)

@breezy5797 Год назад

I never even realized this was a problem! Very informative

@d0pomein Год назад

they need to compensate that womans family. They dun her dirty.

@bryonygriffiths Год назад

Love the 'spleen' @4:26

@arxaaron Год назад

Info of this issue was a real revelation to me. Excellent detailed explanations of the how. the why, and what can be done to fix the problems. Thanks!

@IndigoIndustrial Год назад

I usually split one cell line at a time for this reason. When I applied for a cancer research grant I had to detail the methods used to confirm cell line identity.

@majesticeagle6629 Год назад

“You would hope that the doctor would give you the right medicine for your illness” it better be, it costed me my house for the medicine!

@RomanNumeral04 Год назад

MURICAAAAAA

@quintecence Год назад

As a Chemist, I can relate.. everyone just leaves unlabeled beakers around and wonder why there reactions don't work.. or if you're unlucky, you'll just get a bad paper to follow where there's a fundamental flaw. My catalyst synthesis from my first year of my PhD was like this - no wonder I dropped out 😂

@SocialDownclimber Год назад

Once you get out of research then lab housekeeping gets a lot better in my experience. You still need to do the gentle sniff every now and again though.

@quintecence Год назад

@@SocialDownclimber I completely jumped ship and now I work in hazardous waste disposal 😂

@Baruch-Hashem Год назад

A petri dish once opened to the air is contaminated. The only question is if the contamination is enough, grows mroe rapidly, or even kills the intended cell culture. Its a huge probloem, Thank You for pointing this out.

@sarahleonard7309 Год назад

There is a particular scientist who is very good at spotting cell line contamination, and is frequently brought in to assess the culture purity at various research centers. This person was brought in to assess a huge NIH center. They found so much contamination, the management of the center quietly asked them to leave. The problem was so big, management decided it was too expensive to fix.

@extragoogleaccount6061 Год назад

Question for people that work in the field: Are the cell lines being contaminated mostly in-lab, or are the cell lines being bought from distributors already contaminated and not what was ordered? (I would think that the pressure to retest and spend the money proving a cell line is what is claimed should be more on the distributors selling the lines than on the labs that have ordered them, at least financially.)

@j.f.fisher5318 Год назад

Interesting piece of the repeatability problem.

@Chest3rTheSquirrel Год назад

I take issue with "Researches are rarely required to prove that their cell lines are the ones they think they are." In the past few years, many of the big journals (more than just Nature owned journals) require short tandem repeat (STR) profiling of all new deposited cell lines as well as your own validation of the cell line you claim you're working with. Same with common microbial contaminants. Source: have performed a LOT of STR profiling and contamination testing on cell lines before submitting manuscripts for publication.

@Backtothescience Год назад

Thank you. You have explained this really well.

@michaeljames5936 Год назад

I THOUGHT I had been researching, spindle formation in colon tumour cells for two years, but turns out, I've never had a job like that.... maybe I saw it on the telly or something.

@lizslilcorneroftheinstitution Год назад

Good timing!

@supernerd1999 Год назад

It is poetic that the cells taken without permission now invades other cells without intention

@jediarcherbc709 Год назад

I used this as a source for a science review in my college level biology course. Thanks Hank!

@patrioticmucus2329 Год назад

Ngl, I first read this as "micro plastic problem" and after watching the video I now feel more horrified than if it had been about microplastics.

@jenford7078 Год назад

SciShow is a world treasure

@prapanthebachelorette6803 Год назад

Ok, now my friends in the biology department should not be so hard on themselves for cell line contamination. Now I know that I’m not alone and no one in particular is to blame for this universal issue. Actually I saw how my seniors’ projects are going when I was younger so I ended up abandoning biology projects altogether as a result 😢 (from just a kid perspective because we are being graded by the results). Now that I proceed further in the field and started opening myself up again for new challenges, I can do my best and not be too hard on myself if things failed 😂

@MrARock001 Год назад

In a wild twist of karma, stolen cells from Henrietta Lacks end up ensuring that all future drugs only work on Henrietta Lacks.

@falseking989 Год назад

As someone who deals with chronic pain & who dealt with a rare condition for men, the absolute & unwavering incompetence of licensed medical professionals was shocking.

@regather59 Год назад

Excellent content, thanks. Science research is rarely simple.

@JamesOKeefe-US Год назад

My dream future has Hank open SciKnow, a science validation organization so we can trust the output. Thank you Hank & SciShow for informing us for so many years.

@glenmartin2437 Год назад

Thank you. The HeLa line glitch was 1980's storm. Growing plant tissues is also problematical.

@nicholaserwin988 Год назад

The story of my grad project...spend a whole week trying to grow my cells and then bam contamination and im set back a week or worse a month. Spraying ethanol on my gloves, cleaning the incubator, the fume hood, autoclaving everything, sterile tools etc....and in the end it doesnt seem to matter.

@KxNOxUTA 11 месяцев назад

Ooof though, that's quite a problematic discovery AND how good it was discovered at least! Thank you for teaching about it!

@chelseatappa284 Год назад

Thank you for acknowledging Henrietta!

@thaddeuszukowski4633 Год назад

Thank you so much for this warning!!! Can you get het clean lines from providers?

@lauram9478 Год назад

❤ Thank you, Hank!!

@dysonsquared Год назад

At long last, have the family of Henrietta Lacks seen any renumeration or other benefit (such as scholarships) from their ancestor's unique donation to science?

@kailashbtw9103 Год назад

Thank you Hank!

@scottsluggosrule4670 Год назад

May be more of a problem in academia but pharma gets their cell lines certified, aliquots are made and new cells used for limited time. Good cell culturists would easily spot diff in growth rates and appearance of most cell types.. they are not just blobs. He is right that good lab practices are required for consistency.

@masonjohnson4310 Год назад

The more I hear about HeLa, the more I think about a videogame like Callisto or Deadspace where a cell line goes rampant and becomes a pathogen.

@RomanNumeral04 Год назад

I mean it was originally derived from a cancer tissue sample... so technically a pathogen?

@spindash64 Год назад

Honestly, would be more creative than the big standard zombie apocalypse scenario

@waterunderthebridge7950 Год назад

@@RomanNumeral04 A pathogen is (very loosely) defined as an infectious microorganism or agent, such as a virus, bacterium, protozoan, prion, viroid, or fungus. As commonly, cancer cells will not transmit to another host, they aren’t classically put under that term. Having said that, there _are_ cases of transmittable cancers, see e.g. Devil facial tumour disease

@peterprime2140 Год назад

That's not even close to the story of the Dead Space series, what the hell are you talking about?

@Sedgewise47 Год назад

🤔 Doesn’t the HeLa story-in a way, _at least_ *obliquely*-remind anyone of the SyFy movie “Living Hell”? 🤔 Now that was novel as “movie monsters” go-a “cancer monster”… (Although DC Comics did something similar with a creature called “Kancer,” which was developed from a kryptonite-induced tumor from Superman…)

@IbKinHaan Год назад

This video is super important.

@omagoch Год назад

I work in medicine, and good manufactoring processes are 100% necessary with what we do. We need certificates with every item that we use, even then we sample each batch either in house or a separate lab to make sure that it's up to quality. If it fails, the whole lot goes back. And even if it passes, we have constant quality checks at ever step to make sure the quality is up to par.

@heavymetalbassist5 Год назад

Thanks Hank!

@kae8450 Год назад

This is called as Cross-contamination. It usually happens when you deal with different cell types or you share places with people working with different cell types. Also why people rarely identify their own cells is because they already think it’s authenthicated already, because they usually just buy their cells from a cell bank and doesn’t focus much on characterizations.

@Ibogaman Год назад

What an excellent video

@chrisladouceur4093 Год назад

Do a video on blastosis hominis!

@Second_UNIT Год назад

"just imagine you got sick" Me, who's chronically ill: "Ah, a regular tuesday then"

@Arterexius Год назад

Small changes in science are often overlooked as insignificant by the general public. That's why my favorite example of why small changes in science can have a big impact, is the fact that if we mirror the molecule that is responsible for the taste of oranges, we get the taste of lemons. Chemically speaking, it is exactly the same. The only difference is that it's been mirrored. Yet it instantly becomes something entirely else. The most famous medical catastrophe involving this, is the Thalidomide disaster. But it is also that same disaster that is responsible for us now knowing how little it takes to completely change the biological chemistry of living things and how easily we can accidentally kill, maim and/or seriously injure thousands of people through what seems like a single, miniscule mistake.

@adamk2332 Год назад

You Betta check yo cell, befo' you wreck yo cell, BOOOOOYYYYY!!!!

@LittleFox94 Год назад

Hm regarding the Linode ad: the internet isn't the world wide web, rather the www is one application on the internet - websites and stuff, documents linking to other documents building a web of knowledge The internet is the communication network below, also running other applications like email, games, .. all the other stuff x)

@turquoisewitch.wild-owl Год назад

I saw the movie! It was wonderful!

@olenhol2przez4 Год назад

I actually work with HeLa's every day. We are in the middle of checking if one of newer KO HeLa cells is actually faulty and contain multiple phenotypes (failed crispr or contaminated)

@azjaguar Год назад

1/3rd of all commercially used cell lines “is/are” contaminated with cell lines not of the expected subject base. I see! “That’s quite different, isn’t it!” ~ Emily Littell

@Clarek89 Год назад

Me, a cell culture researcher: new fear unlocked

@littlemissspacedout534 Год назад

We read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for summer reading during high school one year, it's a great book and definitely worth the read!!!!!!!!!!!