Antibiotics and Antimycotics
Antibiotics are used in order to prevent microbial contaminations in cell culture during initial isolation steps or to cure precious cultures exhibiting microbial contamination, e.g. with mycoplasma or yeast/fungi.
However, antibiotics may not only harm contaminating organisms, but can also unfavorably alter the physiology and lifespan of primary human cells. Therefore PromoCell does not recommend the routine use of antibiotics in cell culture as a general preventive measure.
As a further application antibiotics may be utilized in genetic selection procedures, e.g. G-418.

