Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent cells that can differentiate into almost any specialized cell type and also have the ability to generate new, undifferentiated stem cells. The latter process is called self-renewal. Laboratories throughout the world routinely monitor embryonic stem cell colonies for signs of differentiation or self-renewal as a standard procedure for determining the effects of various factors on the self-renewal of mES cells. Generally, cultures are scored manually using a microscope to determine the number of differentiating and non-differentiating colonies. However, manual scoring of individual colonies is known to be a tedious process subject to inter-individual and intra-individual variation. In addition, due to the time-intensive nature of manual colony evaluation, experimental throughput is limited. As shown in the study, the Cellavista System offers an automated way to overcome theses limitations and enables its user to check the differentiation status rapidly and consistently.
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(1) V. Vincent, D. ten Berge, Application Note "Clonal Analysis of mouse ES cells self-renewal"