KBM-7 cells

This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. (July 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

KBM-7 cells are a

KBM-7 cells grow in suspension and are maintained in Iscove's Modified Dulbecco's Medium (IMDM) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum. They divide approximately every 24 hours.^{[citation needed]}

KBM-7 has found applications in a variety of genomic research studies; the cell line has been examined in gene silencing experiments, been reprogrammed to become a stem cell line, and served as a test model for novel drug candidates.^[5]

Significance

One method of studying gene function involves "knocking out" the gene by inducing a mutation. This causes the resulting gene product to be nonfunctional, and researchers can then see how this effects the cell's function as a whole. Many gene editing procedures have very low efficiency, and often both copies of mammalian chromosomes must be knocked out in order to see a phenotypic effect. Having a near-haploid cell line such as KBM-7 greatly increases the efficiency of these studies because there is only one gene that must be knocked out. ^[6]

References