Nutrition of Animal Cells in Tissue Culture. II. Use of Tweens in Synthetic Feeding Mixtures.

Abstract
The effect of Tweens 20, 40, 60, 80 and 85, and of oleic acid, upon the survival of chick embryo mesenchyme cells maintained in a completely synthetic feeding mixture was studied over the concn. range of 0.5% to 0.00005%. Levels of 0.5% and 0.05% were definitely toxic whereas lower concns. were not. Relatively small amts. of ethyl alcohol (0.3%) were inhibitory when used together with low concns. of Tweens. Reduction of the alcohol content to a min. (0.01%) makes it possible to employ the Tweens as a source of water-soluble fatty acids and also to dissolve fat-soluble compounds in aqueous synthetic feeding mixtures.