In modern science, immortalized cells are not only a convenient tool in fundamental research, but they also increasingly used practical medicine. This happens due to their advantages compared the primary cells, such as possibility produce larger amounts of and use them for longer periods time, convenience genetic modification, absence donor-to-donor variability when comparing results different ...

The ability to generate genetically engineered cell lines is of great experimental value. They provide a renewable source of material that may be suitable for biochemical analyses, chromatin immunoprecipitation assays, structure-function studies, gene function assignment, and transcription factor target gene identification. This unit describes protocols for TLX1 (HOX11)-mediated immortalization...

It has been well established that various mammalian cells demonstrate a limited growth capacity in culture referred to as cellular or replicative senescence. There is also some evidence in support of the idea that this is the basis for organismal aging. Recent studies have revealed the molecular mechanisms of telomere involvement in cell senescence, cell cycle control, genome (in)stability and ...

The finite proliferative potential of normal human fibroblasts can be overcome, a process commonly called immortalization, by the introduction of the catalytic subunit of human telomerase. In contrast to malignant transformation, the pattern of gene expression remains largely unmodified in telomerase-induced immortalization. Here we show evidence that suggests that the maintenance of a "young" ...

The contribution of the E6 and E7 open reading frames of human papillomavirus type 6b (HPV6b) and HPV16 to immortalization of human keratinocytes was evaluated by using amphotropic recombinant retroviruses. The HPV16 E7 gene could immortalize primary human keratinocytes without the cooperation of the viral E6 gene; however, E6 was able to contribute significantly to the efficiency of the E7 imm...

Fish cell cultures are becoming more widely used models for investigating molecular mechanisms of physiological response to environmental challenge. In this study, we derived two immortalized Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) cell lines from brain (OmB) and lip epithelium (OmL), and compared them to a previously immortalized bulbus arteriosus (TmB) cell line. The OmB and OmL cell lin...

The immortalization of human cells is a critical step during tumorigenesis. In vitro, normal human somatic cells must overcome two proliferative blockades, senescence and crisis, to become immortal. Transformation with viral oncogenes extends the life span of human cells beyond senescence. Such transformed cells eventually succumb to crisis, a period of widespread cellular death that has been p...

Cellular progression to malignancy appears to require a number of distinct steps in which genetic damage in key regulatory genes accumulates. Immortalization, or escape from senescence, is considered to be one of the first phenotypic changes. Ni2+ treatment of normal human kidney epithelial (NHKE) cells in vitro resulted in immortalization of the cells IHKE cells). The combined action of Ni2+ a...

The IFN pathway is abrogated in fibroblasts from Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS) patients during spontaneous cellular immortalization, a necessary step in carcinogenesis. Microarray profiling of differentially expressed microRNAs (miRNA) revealed that most miRNAs were upregulated in IFN pathway-defective MDAH087-10 fibroblasts compared with MDAH087-N cells with relatively normal IFN signaling. Overe...