Question

1. Consider the following; (a) What are androgen receptor positive cells lines? (b) Why are these cell lines able to serve as androgen receptor positive cell models? (c) What is the detailed procedure to evaluate cell proliferation in these models? Explain the procedures from a cited Experimental Section.

Answer 1

a) Cells lines containing cells that are able to elicit a response (i.e. growth) whenever an androgen (a steroid hormone) is applied.

b) Because these cells are constantly (perhaps overexpressing) synthesizing androgen receptors (these are cytosolic proteins that bind steroid hormones)

c) There are a lot of procedures to evaluate cell proliferation, but, I’ll explain to you a cool one: first, you have to remember that during cell proliferation the activity of the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase increases, therefore all you have to do is incubate a cell culture in a spectrophotometer tube with tetrazolium salts or Alamar Blue and measure the consumption of Alamar Blue (therefore the decrease in absorbance vs time), the cellular division events will make an “inverse peak” of (an increment of consumption) of the reactive.