Immortalized cell lines are derived from primary cells that bypass normal cellular senescence and have an extended life span. The primary cells can also be immortalized by over-expression of various viral genes like the large T-antigen of the simian virus (SV40) or human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT).
Immortalized cells are a highly useful tool for research in cell biology as they retain some characteristics of primary cells, thus providing an unlimited source of homogeneous cells for the research studies.
Advantages:
- Easier to culture
- Cost-effective
- Better characterized, theoretically identical populations that bypass ethical concerns associated with the use of animal and human tissue
- Grow quickly and can be used for the extraction of large amounts of proteins for biochemical assays
The immortalized cell lines are propagated for more than twenty passages to confirm immortalization and are also tested for sterility. Verification of transgene expression in immortalized cells is done by either immunostaining (
Figure 1.) or qRT-PCR.
Figure 1. Immunostaining of SV40-immortalized cells (middle, red) was done to confirm the cellular immortalization. The control, unstained cells were shown as a bright field image (left) and DAPI was used to stain nuclei (right, blue). All the images were taken at 40X magnification. The exposure time was 50 ms.
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