Science Column by Lindsey Washburn
My Sea Monkeys!
I get to have pets this semester in Biotech 120! Well … not really pets. They’re CHOs, Chinese Hamster Ovary cells, carrying a gene of interest. Our gene of interest is just a marker, so that we know the experiment was successful. In the real world CHOs are used to make proteins too complex to be made by bacteria.
Insulin, for example, can be grown in bacteria, and has been for years. But the transmembrane protein that is missing in cases of Cystic Fibrosis cannot. For such a complex, fancy-schmancy protein as the chloride channel, a more complex vector is needed.
An appropriate vector is the CHO, which is many times larger (and much more similar to our own cells) than a bacterium.
We’ll be growing our CHOs in incubators and bioreactors, suspended in nutritious broth. They are delicate little buggers, and require a lot of care. They must be kept in a constant environment, which means acidity, temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels must all be checked daily.
Contamination spells the end of the entire (expensive) experiment. And all that extra checking, calibrating, adjusting and handling make CHO cultures more susceptible to contamination than bacterial cultures.
So, later this semester, I will be given a vial of living mammalian cells which produce a protein of interest. I will have to feed, protect and nurture them as they multiply. True, this pet cannot fetch, and I cannot rub this pet’s tummy … But they will depend on me for their tiny little livelihoods. They’ll be at least as fun as sea monkeys and, hopefully, much more rewarding.
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