Mycoplasma Infection of Cell Cultures

This book is a collection of papers dealing with one of the most ubiquitous and troublesome nuisances of present day research in cell biology. Mycoplasma contamination of cell lines in a cell culture laboratory can cause changes in growth and biochemical properties of the cells, thus introducing uncontrolled variables into the experimental system. The papers in this book were presented at a workshop held at the Institute for Medical Research and cosponsored by several branches of the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health. The papers deal with all basic aspects of the biology of mycoplasma: nomenclature, epidemiology, physiology, and biochemistry. There are practical discussions in which are described various cultural, histologic, and biochemical tests for the detection of mycoplasma infections and schemes for routine testing for mycoplasma in cell culture laboratories. Some of the authors lack consistency in style, footnotes, tables, and photographs. The quality of each paper, however, is generally good and taken as a whole the group is superior to most such collections. There is no better source of current information on mycoplasma and the book is recommended to all researchers dealing with the culture of diploid cells.