[Narrator:] The designation HeLa refers to the name of
a patient who was operated for the treatment
of a cervical carcinoma.
[Narrator:] Dr. and Mrs. George Guy of the Johns Hopkins Hospital
in Baltimore established this cell strain which has been
in continuous culture since nineteen-hundred and fifty-one.
HeLa cells are grown in test tubes where
they may be harvested from the walls by means of a rubber policeman.
The colonies are collected in petri dishes
containing nutrient fluid.
They are transferred later to the surface
of a large sterile glass slide and cut into fragments
suitable for subculture in bottles, test tubes, or on cover slips.
Cells are stimulated by cutting,
but this must be done
with sharp knives to avoid excess trauma.
The cut fragments are collected in a petri dish
containing a nutrient solution.
The essential steps in preparing a culture are now shown.
Cover glasses are placed on a slide,
and plasma is dropped on their surface.
The tissues are now picked up on the tip of a knife blade
and are transferred to the plasma.
They are placed at equidistant points on the cover glass.
An equal amount of embryonic extract is added,
and the mixture is stirred.
When the clot is set, each slide is placed in a test tube,
fluid nutrient is added,
and the culture is incubated at body temperature.
Here we see the development of a freshly transferred culture,
photographed at one frame per minute.
Notice the frame counter
in the right-hand portion of the field.
The middle number represents the flight of time in minutes.
Since this portion of the film was photographed
at one frame per minute,
and is being projected at 24 frames per second,
what we see on the screen is accelerated
by a factor of more than 1,000 times.
The colony spreads with characteristic shifting motions
of the cells.
At higher magnification we see the advance
of the margin of the outgrowing cells.
Three arrows point to rotating nuclei,
a curious phenomenon encountered in tissue cultures
studied with time-lapse photography.
At higher magnification,
we see a nuclear rotation in an individual cell.
This portion of the record is accelerated 160 times.
Then the speed is increased to more than 1,000 times
in order to dramatize the effect.
Mitoses of normal and abnormal types are common.
Three arrows locate elements which will show
normal bipolar divisions,
and a single arrow points to a cell
which will produce a tripolar mitosis.
Here is a quadripolar mitosis.
Frequently, abnormalities of the spindle can be seen.
Chromosomal movements show a wide variety of derangements.
The number of chromosomes is generally between 80 and 90,
but sometimes more than 200 chromosomes can be demonstrated
in dividing cells of the HeLa strain.
Two nuclei are seen in this giant cell,
and here is a giant cell with multiple nuclei
which appears to be in the process of degeneration.
This portion of the film shows numerous
threadlike cytoplasmic processes.
Such filopodia are typical of the HeLa cell.
We see them in a sequence where the level of focus
was changed to show their arrangement in patches.
In the right-hand portion of this field,
the pattern is found even over the area of the nucleus.
In situ, filopodia probably are associated
in an interplay between neighboring cells.
Here we can see the movements of intercellular strands
between two cells in vitro.
In addition to the surface activity of the threadlike processes,
the cytoplasm often shows characteristic ruffles,
which lead to the engulfment of nutrient fluid invacuoles.
This process is very commonly found in HeLa cultures.
We see it taking place
in the left-hand portion of the field.
We can also observe twitching movements
of the cytoplasm, which remain unexplained.
This sequence and many others were collected
in the course of investigations
on the behavior of the HeLa cell as a part
of a cancer research program.
Cell drinking, or pinocytosis, as described
by Dr. Warren Lewis many years ago, accounts
for the intake of large quantities of nutrients.
Cells of this type may ingest more than one third
of their volume in one hour.
The mechanism of pinocytosis and its consequences
remains one of the most challenging problems
of cell physiology.
These records show nutrient intake at the margin,
and the migration of fluid vacuoles toward the nucleus.
These fields were photographed
with an oil immersion objective.
Active folds on the surface of cells
lead some observers to believe that this may result
in the formation of mitochondria.
However, at a slightly deeper level of focus,
we see that filamentous mitochondria
are quite different from the folds at the surface.
The view of an entire cell photographed
with phase-contrast optics
shows cell organs such as mitochondria, vacuoles,
and lipoprotein granules grouped in characteristic patterns.
The juxtanuclear zone or Golgi apparatus,
as it is described from fixed preparations,
is probably represented here in the aggregation
of various cell organoids.
The HeLa cell has become a very useful material for experimental work
not only in the study of cancer but in the field of general cytology.
It is easily cultivated, it exhibits many abnormalities,
and is valuable for the cultivation of a wide variety of viruses.