Technology and uses of cell cultures from the tissues and organs of bony fish.

For a wide range of purposes, primary cell cultures and/or cell lines have been prepared from most tissues and organs of a small fraction of the estimated 20,000 species of bony fish. These cell cultures usually have been maintained with mammmalian sera. For many applications their usefulness would be enhanced by a more piscine and defined environment. However, the piscine equivalents of mammalian polypeptide growth and differentiation factors are largely unknown and are unlikely ever to be available commercially. In the future they might be obtained from the medium in which fish cells have been grown. Therefore, by being a potential source of fish polypeptide growth and differentiation factors, a cell line from a fish organ might be utilized as a Rossetta stone to decipher thein vitro proliferation and differentiation of other cells from this or other organs from the same or different species.