In Vitro Transformation of Human Fibroblasts with SV40 T Antigen (Lipofection)

Abstract

Transformed established cell lines are a useful material for molecular genetic investigations of heritable diseases. Indeed, experiments involving the search for correlations between modifications of the genetic material of the cells (fusion, transfection) and phenotypic transitions require long term culture, selection of clones and subclones, and cell characterization, which are difficult to perform with untransformed cells. Furthermore, besides the slow growth rate of untransformed cells, the senescence occuring after a number of cell generations limits the potential investigations performed on usually scarce and unique material. This is especially true for samples obtained from patients suffering from peroxisomal diseases. The still unexplained wide range of clinical and biochemical cases render each sample potentially precious.