Tissue Culture & Antibody Production Core

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The Tissue Culture Core (Core 1) will be responsible for providing investigators with cultured cells, monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins, and recombinant adeno-associated viruses. Core 1 will be directed by Dr. Russell DeBose-Boyd, with the assistance of Dr. Joseph Goldstein (who has directed the Department of Molecular Genetics Tissue Culture Facility for the past 40 years) and Dr. Guosheng Liang (who has worked in the Department for 20 years). The technical work in the Core is carried out by five experienced technicians, one of whom (Lisa Beatty) has been in charge of this facility for more than 30 years. The physical facilities of the Core consist of four suites of rooms that are used solely for tissue culture. The facility is equipped with 46 incubators, 17 inverted microscopes, 1 stereo microscope, 16 sterile work areas (hoods), 2 roller bottle apparatuses, 7 refrigerated incubator shakers, 3 table-top refrigerated centrifuges, 11 refrigerators, and 7 liquid nitrogen freezers for storage of cell lines. The successful completion of this entire Program Project Grant (PPG) depends on the smooth operation of Core 1. The Core developed considerable experience in maintaining quality control and in growing multiple cell lines, including over 1100 different primary human fibroblast cell strains, derived from skin biopsies from normal subjects as well as from patients with metabolic disorders supported by previous PPGs. Tens of thousands of transfection experiments have been carried out in the Core in which various cell lines (e.g., HEK- 293, CHO, and SV589 cells) have been transfected with multiple plasmid constructs containing either the protein-coding region or the promoter/enhancer region of multiple genes. From these transfections, more than 3000 stable and permanent cell lines have been clonally established and frozen away in multiple aliquots. In addition to maintenance of stock cell lines and preparation of cultured cells for experiments, the Core is involved in the following activities: 1) Generation and maintenance of mouse and rabbit hybridoma cell lines and production of monoclonal antibodies from culture medium; 2) Purification by Protein G- and Protein A- Sepharose chromatography of mouse/rabbit monoclonal and rabbit polyclonal antibodies directed against multiple proteins; 3) Growth of large volumes of suspension-culture cells that allow efficient transfection of cDNAs and production of their encoded proteins; 4) Isolating, maintaining, and freezing away cloned cell lines that have been transfected with mutated versions of various cDNA and promoter/enhancer constructs; 5) Maintenance of mammalian and insect cells in suspension culture for production of recombinant proteins by infecting these cells with recombinant baculoviruses encoding cloned cDNAs; 6) Maintenance and production of cells for generation of recombinant adeno-associated viruses, which are used for evaluating the function of genes in cultured cells and in the liver after in vivo injection; 7) Sending aliquots of monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies and cell lines to hundreds of investigators who request them.