Replica plating of animal cells

One of the tools which has enabled the bacteriologist to screen thousands of mutants is the ability to transfer large numbers of clones from one dish to another while retaining their orientation. In this way a thousand or more clones can be tested simultaneously for several growth characteristics and those of interest picked out from the original dish. 

With animal cells the problems are that the cells grow firmly attached to the substratum yet at the same time move about so that a single clone very soon grows to cover a wide area. A method described by Esko and Raetz (1978) claims to circumvent these problems. 

The cells on the paper disc are viable and may be used in autoradiographic studies. Alternatively, they may be lysed by freeze-thawing and incubated in enzyme assays. 

An alternative method of achieving the same end is to plate out the mutagenised cells in a 96-well microtitration tray as for cell cloning. When colonies have grown up they can be harvested and distributed to several more trays using manual or automatic cell harvesters and diluters available from Titertek (Flow Labs. Ltd.). 

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