When culturing cells, where are the cells removed from a host organism placed?

Question

When culturing cells, where are the cells removed from a host organism placed?

Answer 1

An incubator...for liquid cell cultures you would use water-bath type ones that you warm the water to the desired temperature then place the rack of test-tubes or flasks into. You can also have shaking incubators for cell cultures that require agitation. These simply have a moving platform that you can vary the speed of movement that sits in the water. The test-tubes or flasks themselves will contain whatever medium is need for their requirements, a medium is basically the term given for a nutrient-rich substance that provides the cells with the essential food components for their survival and subsequent growth.

You can also make cell cultures on agar plates and this is used for bacteria and other micro-organisms. Again this is a nutrient rich medium, but this time it is a more solid surface and the cells live on that surface as opposed to in the liquid medium mentioned above. Again the agar plates are placed in an incubator, but this time it is in the form of an oven where you set the temperature and put the plates in.