What is tissue or cell culture

Human tissues or cells can be encouraged to grow in the laboratory. The cells take time to grow and how quickly this happens depends on the type of tissue being cultured. For example, blood cultures typically take 3 days, prenatal cultures (amniotic fluid and CVS) generally require at least 7-10 days, whereas as miscarriage material can take up to 3 to weeks to grow.

Image of human cells in culture visualised down a microscope.

Once sufficient cells have been grown the cells are further processed so that chromosomes can be obtained which are then stained to give a ‘banded’ appearance, rather like a ‘barcode’ pattern, see What are chromosomes? Chromosomes can only be seen when a cell is dividing (mitosis), so we must grow or culture a sample in order to obtain sufficient dividing cells for analysis. The stage at which we see the chromosomes is also known as metaphase during mitotis and these cells are sometimes referred to as metaphase cells.

Chromosome test results can take on average 10-28 days to be reported depending on the sample type being cultured, Test times.