An odd phenomena is happening in the lab that you are working in for the summer.
ID: 179636 • Letter: A
Question
An odd phenomena is happening in the lab that you are working in for the summer. Almost everyone's cells are dying or growing very slowly. The principle investigator (lead scientist, "boss") just switched to a new company to supply the Fetal Bovine Serum, L-glutamine and sodium bicarbonate, and is suspicious that one of these reagents is "bad". He has now assigned you the task of figuring out what is happening. Design a quantitative experiment to determine which reagent (if any) is the culprit for the slow cell growth. Be sure you explain your "end-point" and how your experiment will lead you to determining the culprit. Note that your boss expects you to perform statistical analysis.Explanation / Answer
Cell growth depends on several parameters such as proper growing reagents with optimum concentration, temperature, CO2 %, sterilisation and proper handling. Since everyone cells are dying or had a slow growth. Initially, we should check all the systems such as CO2 incubator where the cells are maintained for proper temperature and CO2% and properly humidified atmosphere. Then we should start changing one variable for reagent combination. Like first change FBS of the new company and use L-glutamine and sodium bicarbonate of older one and check the growth of cells. Similarly use L-glutamine and mix with old FBS and sodium bicarbonate and check the growth. Likewise, do for sodium bicarbonate. Monitor these experiments for three to four independently to calculate the statistical analysis. Monitoring can help to understand the culprit for slow growth or dying of cells. One more thing I would like to add that also checks the concentration of antibiotics, because some time excess concentration can arrest the growth.