Does cell culture and passaging alter gene expression patterns and proliferation rates in rheumatoid arthritis synovial fibroblasts?
Cell culture and passaging alters gene expression in rheumatoid arthritis synovial fibroblasts, suggesting experiments should be limited to early passages to avoid false positive results.
The results of this study show, that experiments, which examine gene expression of RASF and shall reflect or imitate an in vivo situation, should be limited to early culture passages to avoid cell culture effects. It is not necessary to stop culturing SF after a few passages, but to keep the problems of cell culture in mind to avoid false positive results. Especially, when large-scale screening methods on mRNA level are used. Of note, freezing does not affect gene expression substantially.
Neumann et al. (Wed,) studied this question.