ABSTRACT
Lymphocyte culture is a short term cell culture technique used to obtain a large number of metaphases necessary for cytogenetic investigations. This technique was fi rst used for culturing human blood in the 1960’s (Boll and Fuchs 1961; Woodliff 1964). In fi shes it was fi rst successfully used in Cyprinus carpio in 1967 by Labat et al. The principle is based on the incubation of either the whole blood or leukocytes in a suitable medium in the presence of components stimulating cell division (mitogens). Mitogens activate the immunocompetent cells thus stimulating cell growth and division (Pfeiffer 1974). Phytohemagglutinin (PHA), extracted from the red kidney bean Phaseolus vulgaris, fi rst used for separating leukocytes from whole blood by agglutination of the erythrocytes, has been demonstrated to induce leukocyte division (Nowell 1960) and it is by far the most used mitogen.
