Spontaneous and Virus Induced Transformation in Cell Culture

A. Definitions of Transformation in vitro When normal tissues or organs are explanted to conditions favoring the growth of cells as individual units ("cell culture"), the original cell population undergoes a large variety of modifications. Only a minority of the cells will thrive and multiply and within a rather short period of time, the complex composition of the original explant is replaced by a much simplified one of only a few recogniz­ ably different cell types. With most organs fibroblast-