Culture of Animal Cells: A Manual of Basic Technique

There are not a lot of glossy pretty pictures, which is a good thing for a no-nonsense instruction manual that gets the point across with what pictures it did have. I found it to be a very good complement to my cell culture class. Everything I learned in the lab was put into context nicely.

For many years Freshney's Culture of Animal Cells has been the gold standard of tissue culture reference books. This new edition adds and updates many techniques and continues to be the best book in its area. I use it extensively both for my own research and in teaching classes on tissue culture.

Freshney's Culture of Animal Cells is a great book. It is writen on an easy style, it is concise and complete at the same time and it does teach you all the basics (and a little bit more) of cell culture. When I was doing my masters I didn't have a lot of help with my cell culture experiments and this book was fundamental for my research. The book covers everything, starting from the biology of cultured cells, equipments, design of the lab and asseptic technique and going all the way to primary culture, cloning and selection, cell separation, characterization, differentiation and more. The book (hard cover) is pretty resistant and it easily stands going to the bench (where you surely will be using it a lot). If you are thinking about spending money on a book about cell culture techniques this is the book! Don't think twice.

Even though this book was published in 2001, it is still an irreplaceable source of info in my lab. The pictures and tables are wonderful. The only drawback is that is lacks info on a few cell lines (THP1, for example).

I purchased this book a year ago to use in a clinical virology laboratory. Although many of the recipes used in my field are essentially set, this book allowed for broad learning in the skill of cell culture. I learned many principles of cell culture that were poorly explained or not mentioned in clinical literature and books.This book is well laid out, the chapters well written, and the information is comprehensive. Subjects include (besides the usual stuff of cell culture) chapters covering equipment materials, safety, contamination, scale up, a reagent appendix, and supplier's listing.This book is an excellent choice for the serious beginner. The expert will certainly find this book of value because even experts are only expert at what they do routinely and there is so much to know. This would be a great training source for research or clinical laboratories who perform cell culture.