• Question: Where do you find stem cells? Thank you

    Asked by to Emma on 18 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Emma Reid

      Emma Reid answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Hi there!
      We get stem cells from blood which we take from healthy volunteers in our lab! I’ve even donated blood myself a few times! We don’t need to take a lot of blood, just around 20-40mL. We then spin the blood in a centrifuge with a special solution which splits the blood up into layers: plasma at the top, then a layer of white blood cells and then the red blood cells sink to the bottom of the tube. We remove the white blood cell layer and put it in a flask which has been coated with collagen, as this is what our stem cells like to grow on. We ‘feed’ the cells with a special cell culture medium that contains all the growth factors that they need to be happy and healthy and after about 3 weeks we start to see the stem cells in the flask. We can then do experiments with them. Hope this answers your question! 🙂
      Emma

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