Use of Antibiotics in cell cultures is a standard practice to prevent bacterial contamination. Penicillin, Streptomycin or a combination are the most commonly used antibiotics in mammalian cell cultures. Mechanism of action of these antibiotics vary based on the structure 1. by inhibition of cell wall formation in case of penicillin and 2. Inhibition of bacterial protein synthesis when Streptomycin is used resulting in bacterial death. Little is known about how the antibiotics can affect the cell culture at test, the gene expression and thereby the experimental results based on the type of analysis being performed.
In a recent Nature scientific report Ann H Ryu et al present the effects of antibiotic use on gene expression in HepG2 cells, an immortalized human liver cell line. HepG2 is commonly used for pharmacokinetic, metabolic and genomic studies. The authors use RNA-seq and H3K27ac ChIP-seq approaches to measure the gene expression and regulation changes associated with use of pen-strep in HepG2 cultures.
Their results suggest that the use of antibiotics is a critical factor that should be accounted for while carrying out genetic, genomic and other biological studies. Detailed results and full-text of the article can be found here
