What are the consequences of infection of these cell lines by mycoplasmas, or the subsequent loss of the cell cultures?
3. What resources are or can be made available to implement the necessary program? This will help you to determine whether to do it yourself in-house or to contract with an outside reference laboratory. Once these three questions have been fully answered, a mycoplasmal testing program can be implemented. Always select the best test you can afford and commit enough resources to do an effective job. An inadequate testing program results in a false sense of security that can lead to serious problems later on. There are 5 basic steps when setting up a good mycoplasmal testing program: 1. Test all of your cell lines that are currently in use to eliminate these cultures as potential sources of contamination. 2. Quarantine and then test all cell lines coming into the lab from any outside sources. Do the same for any cultures currently stored in your cell repository that were not tested at the time of storage. 3. Test continuously maintained cell cultures at defined intervals (most experts rec
