Tissue Culture Equipment

What is Tissue Culture?

Tissue culture is a vital application in the life sciences laboratory. Tissue culture refers in a layman's term to the development of cells or tissues that is separated from the organism. Thus, tissue culture is another name for cell culture. If we say only "tissue culture," it would generally mean culturing of the animal tissues and cell. For plants there is a more specific term and that is called plant tissue culture. However mostly tissue culture or cell culture is used interchangeably for defining the in vitro culturing of mammalian cells. Tissue culture is often done in a media. Tissue culture media can be solid, liquid, or semi-solid. Mostly tissue culture is done in the designated tissue culture laboratories where there are laminar flow work surfaces available. Typically cultures are grown in a controlled environment room. Most of the laboratories where tissue culture takes place has full fledged laminar-flow sterile hoods along with cell incubators.

Basic Tissue Culture Equipment

Tissue culture techniques have to be conducted in a clean, safe environment. This is essential for cell culture researchers as well as for cell lines. Therefore the biotechnology equipment manufacturers and suppliers usually provide well tested equipment for safe and proper cultivation, incubation and preservation of cells. Following are the basic tissue culture equipment used in cell culture laboratories.

Microplate/ Culture Plate

A microplate or microwell plate is a flat plate with multiple "wells" used as small test tubes. It is one of the standard tools in analytical research and also in clinical diagnostic testing laboratories. Microplates for tissue culture are specially designed for live cells and are often referred to as culture plates. These microplates are "tissue culture treated." The surfaces of these microplates for tissue culture are modified using a plasma discharge to make them easier for adherent cells to grow on.

Tissue Culture Incubators

Incubation is significant for growing cells in the tissue or cell culture process. Cells have to be grown in optimal conditions while inside the incubator. A properly made tissue culture incubator offers flexibility to the researcher along with stability and reliability through innovative designs. They minimize contamination problems apart from offering energy efficiency and safe environment for cells lines. There are many type of incubators available for tissue culture such as general purpose, water jacketed and air jacketed CO2 incubators with decontamination cycles.

Seed Germinators

A seed germinator or seed germinating machine is a plant tissue culture equipment. Germination is the process where a plant or fungus emerges from a seed or spore and begins growth. The seed germinating equipment are designed to conduct various experiments on the germination of seeds in various controlled environmental conditions. The modern seed germinators can control all the crucial environmental parameters like temperature, humidity and illumination through advanced micro-processor based technology. This creates a near to perfect environmental conditions for any given germination research for highly accurate data. Apart from the lab seed germinator, there are economical commercial grade seed germinators also that are generally used as sprouters in various agro-based industries and tissue culture industries. In these seed germinators, the control modules are not micro-processor based but electronic solid state based which makes them commercially viable for rugged handling in production floors.

Tissue Culture Flasks

Tissue culture flasks provide an even surface refinement in the growth zone. The inside surface treatment must provide an optimal growth surface on the flask base for the most varied matrix-dependent tissue cultures. The untreated side and top inside surfaces of tissue culture flasks reduce the amount of cell loss during the separation phases, because undesired tissue adhesion outside the growth zone is diminished. The modern tissue culture flasks are available with filtered or vented caps which ensure the accessibility of the interior of the flask, and the cap closure.

Shakers

Shakers are one of the important tissue culture equipments. Laboratory shakers including incubated shakers are used in a wide variety of scientific applications such as molecular biology, plant and animal cell culture, fermentation, genetic research, drug discovery and microbiology. Most of the modern shakers have an ideal construction including dual shaking action, orbital or reciprocating motion , a brushless DC motor for uniform shaking and a dirt-repellent powder coated external surface. The benchtop incubated shakers have benchtop incubator, refrigerator with dual action in orbital and reciprocating shakers. The floor model incubated shakers are capable of heavy capacity shaking as well as rapid heating and cooling performance. Open air shakers have advanced dual shaking features with variable speed control.