STR profiling on authentication of human cell lines in cell banks / 中华微生物学和免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the profiling and authentication of human cell lines in cell bank of our department using short tandem repeat (STR) loci and to analyze the situation of cell contamination and misjudgment. Methods Sixty-one human cells including cells collected and preserved by our cell bank and cells from the other departments were detected by the 16 STR loci-method. To analyze the cross contamina-tion between human cell lines, the results were aligned with profiles published by international cell banks. Isoenzyme detection was employed to authenticate the cell species when the STR signal can not be detected. Results Among the 61 cells, specific profiles were produced by 41 ceils and there was no cross contamina-tion. Thirty-six cells had the completely same STR profiles in 9 STR loci with the same cells preserved by ATCC or JCRB, while 5 cells have different profiling just in the vWA loci. The cells referred above can be recognized as correct cells; Eleven cells (18.0%) were the false cells. Among them, cancer cells of tongue named Tca8113 and cancer cell of liver named HHCC(changed to FHCC98 now) had the same profile with HeLa and HeLa S3 respectively; Two ceils both named HUT-102 have the completely different profiles with ATCC; The signal of 4 cells was not be detected, and all of them were determined as hamster cell lines by u-sing isoenzyme detection. Also 2 cells were identified to be mixed cells. Conclusion The phenomenon of cell misjudgment and cross contamination between cells is serious. Authentication of cell lines correctly, es-pecially for the re-authenticatian of domestic self-established cells, is very important for the guarantee of the reliability and reproducibility for scientific researches.