cell culture Cell culture or tissue culture is the process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions, generally outside of their natural environment. The term "tissue culture" was coined by American pathologist Montrose Thomas Burrows. This te ...

biology, confluence refers to the percentage of the surface of a

culture dish A Petri dish (alternatively known as a Petri plate or cell-culture dish) is a shallow transparent lidded dish that biologists use to hold growth medium in which cells can be cultured,R. C. Dubey (2014): ''A Textbook Of Biotechnology For Class- ...

that is covered by adherent cells. For example, 50 percent confluence means roughly half of the surface is covered, while 100 percent confluence means the surface is completely covered by the cells, and no more room is left for the cells to grow as a monolayer. The cell number refers to, trivially, the number of cells in a given region.

Impact on research

Many cell lines exhibit differences in growth rate or gene expression depending on the degree of confluence. Cells are typically passaged before becoming fully confluent in order to maintain their proliferation

phenotype In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological proper ...

. Some cell types are not limited by

contact inhibition In cell biology, contact inhibition refers to two different but closely related phenomena: contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL) and contact inhibition of proliferation (CIP). CIL refers to the avoidance behavior exhibited by fibroblast-like cells ...

, such as

immortalized cells Biological immortality (sometimes referred to as bio-indefinite mortality) is a state in which the rate of mortality from senescence is stable or decreasing, thus decoupling it from chronological age. Various unicellular and multicellular species, ...

, and may continue to divide and form layers on top of the parent cells. To achieve optimal and consistent results, experiments are usually performed using cells at a particular confluence, depending on the cell type. Extracellular export of cell free material is also dependent on the cell confluence .

Estimation

Rule of thumb

Comparing the amount of space covered by cells with unoccupied space using the naked eye can provide a rough estimate of confluency.

Hemocytometer

hemocytometer The hemocytometer (or haemocytometer) is a counting-chamber device originally designed and usually used for counting blood cells. The hemocytometer was invented by Louis-Charles Malassez and consists of a thick glass microscope slide with a ...

can be used to count cells, giving the cell number.

References

{{Reflist Cell culture