PURE CULTURES OF CELLS

Abstract

In experiment I a group of ameboid cells was isolated from a culture of cardiac muscle sixty-three days old, and cultivated in plasma. After several passages, they formed a dense tissue from which ameboid cells radiated. The culture was divided into two parts. The part cultivated in plasma alone kept its morphological characters and continued to produce ameboid cells. The part cultivated upon silk in plasma became modified; the cells lost their ameboid characters, and were transformed into large elongated cells which were united in chains, or interlaced to form a network. In experiment II the round cells taken from a culture of connective tissue seventy-four days old multiplied rapidly. They transformed themselves into elongated cells and produced, after a few passages, a mass of dense connective tissue. From the tissue a large number of elongated cells were constantly growing. In both experiments the tissues originated from the ameboid or round cells extirpated from cultures that were sixty-three and seventy-four days old respectively. These cultures were still growing actively thirty and forty days later; that is, more than one hundred days after the extirpation of the original fragments from the organism. These experiments show that from old cultures it is possible to isolate and propagate cells that belong to a definite type. A tissue, formed by a pure strain of cells, can be obtained in this way, and this new method may be of value in cytological investigations.