Week 5

Welcome back to my blog! This week, I was able to start a new cell line of Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells. These cells will then later be used for assaying in the future to test the efficiency of the dexamethasone analogs.

However, they need to reach around 70-80% confluent in order to be used in experiments like assays. Confluency in cell culture pretty much just describes how much of the surface of the cell plate is covered with cells. This is important to keep track of regularly (using a microscope) since reaching hyperconfluency would mean the cells would start dying. When the cells do reach higher levels of confluency, usually splits are done to reduce the aggregateness of the cells and separating the cells into multiple plates.