Talk:HEK 293 cells

message: I'm all but certain that 'HEK' always means 'HEK 293'. I've never heard of any other kind of HEK cell line, and although it's technically possible to grow new primary cultures of human embryonic kidneys, it's not the kind of thing you'd do if you could possibly avoid it (human embryonic kidneys are difficult to come by, the paperwork's a nightmare, and epithelia are a bugger to grow anyway!).
If i'm wrong, we'll need to split the definitions of HEK and HEK 293. Everything on this page is about HEK 293s.
-- Tom Anderson 2006-03-11
:As implied above, HEK can be used to mean any human embryonic kidney cell. All references cited in this article call them as HEK-293 or just 293 cells, not as HEK cells. Also, as someone using these cells regularly, I usually hear 293 cells in lab usage, with the assumption that their full name is HEK 293. Moreover, Google reports 31,000 uses of "HEK cell", while there are 590,000 uses of "HEK 293 cell" as of August 2013.
:Also, not being able to grow primary human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells easily is not a reason to deny them their names. And they exist, and are clearly not 293 cells. Given the common usage attested by the references within this article, and Google usage, moving of this article to HEK 293 would be the reasonable action here. Enozkan (talk) 20:56, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: HEK vs. HEK 293

message: The HEK cell photo is terrible.  Looks nothing like properly adherent HEK293 cells. It misleads about the general morphology of HEK cells.
AndrewHires (talk) 14:29, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with this - the picture is not representative of the "normal" appearance of HEK cells in culture.  --Kristina  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Schimmk2 (talk • contribs) 21:35, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Photo

message: Shouldn't the "transformation" link got to "malignant transformation"? Now it goes to a page talking about putting DNA i E. coli.Eaberry (talk) 18:59, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Kind of agree, they could mean that the cells were immortalized (transformed in the eukaryotic sense) by adding sheared viral DNA, or it could mean that the cells were caused to take up sheared viral DNA (transformed in the bacterial sense), either meaning makes sense, though the second makes marginally more sense in context, in which case it should be transfected rather than transformed. As no one has actually bothered to change this in seven years, even though there is no dissent on the matter, I shall change it now.  Alun (talk) 07:18, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: "transformation" link

message: Substituted at 01:01, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: I just got done arguing with a bunch of demented conspiracy theorists propagating the insane belief that major food and drink companies harvest aborted babies en masse for use in flavoring their products.  I was slightly surprised that this article didn't talk about the actual facts that inspired this belief, which is apparently quite popular in certain circles.  I don't have time to do so at the moment, but I think it'd be good in the Applications section for someone to mention that Senomyx uses HEK 293 cells to produce taste receptors that are used to automate first-round testing of new artificial flavoring candidates.  Ideally it should make it clear to the average reader that these cells are used to test chemical flavorings, not used as flavorings themselves.  Snopes has a pretty good article on this.  --Dan Harkless (talk) 16:58, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Use by Senomyx to produce taste receptors to test new artificial flavorings

message: I agree that this kind of additional information, sensitively presented, would be valuable. As it happens, I came to this page today following up on this exact conspiracy theory. I lack the technical knowledge to create this content myself, but if anyone wants to take on that task they'd be doing everyone a favour. Presentation might be challenging, because the existing content is very technical, and any reference to the "flavourings from aborted fetuses" theory will need to be understandable for the lay person. Rob Burbidge (talk) 13:05, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Agree!

message: I got into arguments with some otherwise reasonable people about this conspiracy theory and I agree that this should be pointed out in the ethical issues: there are no fetuses in your chips, but an unfortunate fetus in the '70s has been cloned many times and its line is now used to screen out artificial flavors. Christian.Mercat (talk) 15:36, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: +1

message: I am struggling with the date.
So my questions is whether this cell line was established in 1973, and this was then published in 1977.
Or were only the kidney cells obtained in 1973, and thereafter, maybe 1977, the cell line was established (and published)?
The literature (i. e. ) simply states that the cells (!) were derived in 1973 from the kidney, but that does not necessarily mean that also the cell line was established in that year. However, the article here states this, but without a source (which could be ).--Julius Senegal (talk) 19:08, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess one confusion by the original threadstarter was the discrepancy between those 4 years. They were cultured for 4 years probably, perhaps similar to HeLa. Although I think the current HeLa cells may be distinct to the original one due to various changes. The HeLa article was published, I think, quite quickly after the isolation, so those 4 years difference is a bit confusing indeed. The article could perhaps explain that delay.  2A02:8388:1641:5500:8207:8CE:DF2:AB90 (talk) 09:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  When was the cell line established - 1973 or 1977 ?