Oxygenation in cell culture: Critical parameters for reproducibility are routinely not reported

Abstract

Mammalian cell culture is foundational to biomedical research, and the reproducibility of research findings across the sciences is drawing increasing attention. While many components contribute to reproducibility, the reporting of factors that impact oxygen delivery in the general biomedical literature has the potential for both significant impact, and immediate improvement. The relationship between the oxygen consumption rate of cells and the diffusive delivery of oxygen through the overlying medium layer means parameters such as medium depth and cell type can cause significant differences in oxygenation for cultures nominally maintained under the same conditions. While oxygenation levels are widely understood to significantly impact the phenotype of cultured cells in the abstract, in practise the importance of the above parameters does not appear to be well recognized in the nonspecialist research community. On analyzing two hundred articles from high-impact journals we find a large majority missing at least one key piece of information necessary to ensure consistency in replication. We propose that explicitly reporting these values should be a requirement for publication.