Nocodazole does not synchronize cells: implications for cell-cycle control and whole-culture synchronization

Rejoinder: whole-culture synchronization cannot, and does not, synchronize cells.

There have been numerous proposals suggesting that whole-culture methods - in which all cells in a growing culture are treated identically - can synchronize cells. An explicit defense of these methods has been presented (Spellman and Sherlock, this issue, pp. 270-273, ). Here, this defense of whole-culture 'synchronization' is subjected to a critical evaluation leading to the conclusion that wh...

Reply: whole-culture synchronization - effective tools for cell cycle studies.

Studies of gene expression during the eukaryotic cell cycle in whole-culture synchronized cultures have been published using many methodologies. These procedures alter the state of the cell cycle for a population of cells, rather than purifying a population of cells that are in the same state. Criticism of these methods (e.g. see Cooper, this issue, pp. 266-269, ) suggests that these studies ar...

In Vitro Cell Cycle Synchronization of Sheep Granulosa Cells

Purpose: To investigate the effect of different methods of synchronization on sheep granulosa cell cycle. Materials and Methods: Granulosa cells were aspirated from ovarian follicles and plated in a DMEM medium containing 15% FBS. Upon 70-80% confluency, the medium of the primarycultured as well as the passaged-5 cells were replaced with the medium containing either 0.5% FBS for 24, 48 and 72 h...

Commentary: Similar Philosophy Does Not Always Synchronize

Biological methods for cell-cycle synchronization of mammalian cells.

Understanding the molecular and biochemical basis of cellular growth and division involves the investigation of regulatory events that most often occur in a cell-cycle phase-dependent fashion. Studies examining cell-cycle regulatory mechanisms and progression invariably require cell-cycle synchronization of cell populations. Thus, many methods have been established to synchronize cells at speci...