Media for culture of mammalian cells.

When mammalian cells are cultured in vitro, the investigator is attempting to reproduce the physiological environment in order to maintain and analyze normal functions and responses. The culture medium is an essential component of the in vitro environment and must be selected or designed with care. This unit provides guidelines for design of serum-containing and serum-free media, selective and specialty media, and media for growth under special conditions such as soft-agar growth.