Piekny: splitting cells

Concept

Tissue culture cells need to be "split" to keep them alive. The process involves taking a portion of the cells and resuspending them in fresh culture media so they can grow. If they're left too long in the culture media, they will die, so this process needs to be repeated to keep them alive. They're kept in DMEM, which is red in color. Once it turns orange, the cells are ready to be split again. The DMEM must be used at room temperature or, optimally, at 37°C

Procedure

1. Take the stock plate from the incubator
2. In the tissue culture hood and being careful not to touch the cells (on the bottom), aspirate off all the media (use a clean tip!)
3. Add 10 ml of PBS carefully (so as not to kill the cells, use the "gravity" setting on the pipettor)
4. Add 500 ul of trypsin-EDTA
5. Swirl around
6. Put at 37°C for 5 minutes to let the trypsin work
7. Add 10 ml of DMEM+FBS+glutamine+antibiotics to the trypsinized cells
8. Add 10 ml of DMEM+FBS+glutamine+antibiotics to a new, labelled petri dish
9. Add 1 ml of the trypsinized cells to the new dish, discard the rest (aspirate off then throw away dish)
10. Put at 37°C until desired confluency

To add

DMEM needs 50 ul FBS, 5 ml glutamine, 5 ml antibiotics

Use this media for everything except lipofectamine transfection

You can use Hela most of the time, but Heck is also good?