Summary
A permanent tissue-cultured cell line (designated OK) has been established from kidney tissue of an adult American opossum. The OK line has been characterized with respect to morphology, chromosome constitution, tissue-culture requirements, and attainable mitotic arrest. The cells are epithelial-like with a stable nondiploid chromosomal modal number of 23. Cells grown in Eagle's minimal essential medium with 10% fetal bovine serum have a mean doubling time of 18 hr. The cell line OK is potentially useful for the isolation and purification of the mammalian X chromosome because of the size differential between the smaller X's and the larger autosomes.
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This work was supported by NIH grant HD-04420.
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Koyama, H., Goodpasture, C., Miller, M.M. et al. Establishment and characterization of a cell line from the american opossum (Didelphys virginiana). In Vitro 14, 239–246 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02616032
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02616032