Large capacity suspension cell culture CO2 incubator system

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A eukaryotic cell CO2 incubator is a piece of equipment that is used to grow eukaryote cells (such as human or mouse cells). The use of cell systems for biochemical research is very practical and in many instances it circumvents the use of animals. Several aspects of the research pursued in my laboratory (currently funded by NSERC) involve the characterization of structural chromatin transitions that are involved in the cell differentiation process (spermatogenesis) that leads to the formation of male sperm cells (spermiogenesis). An important part of this work involves the reconstitution of chromatin templates using chromosome proteins (histones) consisting of different post-translational modifications. These are biologically-relevant chemical modifications (for instance, acetylation, phosphorylation, methylation) undergone by these proteins. A CO2 incubator is critical for growing in liquid suspension cultures the large amounts of cells required for these types of work. Our past research on spermiogenesis started with the analysis of several fundamental aspects of the spermiogenesis process shared by invertebrate and vertebrate organisms. For the last ten years we have used a second hand CO2 incubator that we inherited from a colleague's lab. As the interests of this research have evolved towards mammalian organisms in recent years, the need for access to a good piece of such equipment has become imperative.