Contamination. Help needed

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Dear all,

We have problems of contamination in several of our cell lines. Cell viability is pretty good, however, cell morphology is affected whatever the cell line. In addition and importantly, we observe a lot of small particles in the medium. Their number increase over time.
Mycoplasma tests were negative. We also sent our samples to 2 microbiological labs. Nevertheless, they were not able to identify the source of our contamination. We are wondering whether these contaminations are due to (myco)bacteria, viruses, or even yeast.
You may find attached movies showing how these particles "appear". The morphology of this cell line is normally homogeneous with round cells.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n1p711dwfxnzx ... 9.mov?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ggbt1u8i3piau ... n.avi?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sp2ncal7szl2k ... s.mov?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c0okt4k3twgzg ... n.avi?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ngjhzcy9fejz ... l.avi?dl=0

Does somebody have an idea concerning this contamination ?

Thanks for your help,

Cindy

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@Cindy1,

It would help to know your background to make any useful suggestions re whom you should ask. Who is "we"? People who work at a research lab? Students doing a project? Have you googled contamination in cell lines? Looked at any microbio books or websites? Talked with any professors?

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@ossobuco,

Thanks for your answer.
By "we" I mean people working at the research lab (including other post docs and our boss). We are a lab specialised in molecular and cellular biology and nobody around us do really have any experience in microbiology or virology.
We have this problem for 4 months. We checked on internet. At the beginning we thought that the particles we observed were mycobacteria. But the gram tests form the labs appeared negative. We are not able to determine whether these particles are the source of contamination or just a consequence.
Of note, we already cleaned the lab (laminar cows, incubators, etc) and threw everything away. But the problem is still here. And we do not know how to solve it.

Cindy

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Your links are broken.

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@Cindy1,

I've an old degree in micro but that was long ago; later worked in research labs at a good university, but that is long ago too now, and not with cell lines as such, so I'm no help. Do you have any nearby good university? thinking biomed library, access to useful journals or perhaps experts about contamination, and so on.

Never mind re my help, but maybe others here will have a better clue than I do either re your exact problem or who to ask.

Edit to say maybe there are online good biomed libraries I don't know about since back in my day, there was no internet.

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Contamination. Help needed

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