Question

Why do we add fetal bovine serum to cell culture media? (2-3 paragraphs)

Answer 1

Fetal bovine serum is the most widely used serum-supplement for the in vitro cell culture of eukaryotic cells.

This is due to it having a very low level of antibiotics and containing more growth factors,allowing for versatility in many different cell culture applications.A cardiac punture is performed on a cow's fetus during slaughter,the blood refrigerated so that it will clot

FBS contains a variety of small molecules like aminoacids,sugers,lipids and hormones.It provides many essential nutrients and growth factors that faccilitate cell survival and proliferation.Bovine serum albumin is the major component of FBS.FBS is the liquid fraction of clotted blood from fetal claves,depleted of cells,fibrin and clotting factors,but containing a large number of nutritional and macromolecular factors essential for cell growth.In addition fetal serum contains lower levels of complement proteins than those from adults or newborns.These complements have the undesiarable effects of lysing cells in culture and interfering with immunoassays.The rich variety of proteins in fetal bovine serum maintains cultured cells in a medium in which they can survive,grow,and divide