How to look at cells in a cell factory through a microscope

As a common consumable for large-scale cell culture, cell factories play an important role in vaccine development, biopharmaceuticals and other fields. Cell culture is a special task. After all preparations are done, it is necessary to grasp the growth state of cells in time to make adjustments to each work.

Depending on the culture area, the cell factory consists of one or more layers such as 1 layer, 2 layers, 5 layers, 10 layers, and 40 layers. Observing the growth state of cells generally requires an inverted microscope, but this instrument usually only It is suitable for observing 1-10 layers of cell factories, and can observe the growth of 1 and 2 layers. The bottom second layer can only observe the uniformity of its cells, and it is not suitable for forty layers.

If you want to observe the growth state of cells in more layers of cell factories, you need to use microscopes specially designed to observe cell factories. Such instruments generally have lenses in two directions: side observation and bottom observation. The system can calculate the cell size and growth density, and can observe the state of cells in all layers of cell factories.

Cells with good cell growth state can be observed under the microscope with large transparency, strong refraction, and unclear outline. If the cell growth state is poor, the cell outline will be enhanced, the cell refractive index will be weakened, vacuoles, lipid droplets and other granular substances will appear in the cell cytoplasm, the gap between cells will increase, the shape will be irregular, and even the original cells will be lost. Features, resulting in round shrinkage and shedding, and sometimes filamentous flocs appear on and around the cell surface.

When observing the cells in the cell factory, pay attention to the concept of sterility. The movements should be light, avoid violent shocks, the observation time should not be too long, and the number of observations should not be too frequent, so as not to affect the cell growth.