ANALYSIS OF SHORT TANDEM REPEAT MARKERS FOR AUTHENTICATION OF NON-HUMAN PRIMATE SAMPLES

Abstract

Cell line contamination continues to be an issue in molecular biology even with publications that inform scientists about the importance of cell line authentication as well as the publications that identify misidentified cell lines (Stacey 2000). Therefore, scientists continue to publish papers that misrepresent data that could affect downstream research and the pharmaceutical industry in areas such as drug and vaccine development (ATCC 2012a). The state of art technology, short tandem repeat (STR) analysis can be used to authenticate human cell lines and there are multiple databases that record contaminated cell lines to educate scientist about the problems in cell culture. This technology however has not been applied to authenticate non-human primate (NHP) cell lines, which may contaminate human cell lines or other NHP lines almost as often as human cell lines are contaminated. Not only are non-human primate cell lines essential tools in biomedical research, but they also are used as an in vitro model to study human genetic diseases such as cancer. In addition to cell lines, non-human primates from biomedical research animal colonies are also used as a model organism for human diseases because of genetic conservation. Therefore, without proper testing to identify and distinguish NHP cell lines and primary samples time, labor, and materials can be wasted.