Cell culture is the complex process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions, generally outside of their natural environment. In practice, the term "cell culture" now refers to the culturing of cells derived from multi-cellular eukaryotes, especially animal cells. However, there are also cultures of plants, fungi and microbes, including viruses, bacteria and protists. The historical development and methods of cell culture are closely interrelated to those of tissue culture and organ culture.
Animal cell culture became a common laboratory technique in the mid-1900s, but the concept of maintaining live cell lines separated from their original tissue source was discovered in the 19th century.
Read more about Cell Culture: History, Applications of Cell Culture, Common Cell Lines, List of Cell Lines
Famous quotes containing the words cell and/or culture:
“I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn’t know where to die.”
—Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)