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Investigation of the mixed origins of the MGC-803 cell line reveals that it is a hybrid cell line derived from HeLa

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A Correction to this article was published on 16 January 2024

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Abstract

Human cancer cell lines have an essential role in cancer research, but only authentic cell lines should be used as biological models. Authentication testing using short tandem repeat (STR) loci has shown that MGC-803 cells, which were reported to come from gastric adenocarcinoma, are similar to HeLa. In this study, we confirmed that the MGC-803 cell line contains genetic material from HeLa, including genetic sequence from human papilloma virus 18 (HPV18). Additional alleles were present on STR analysis that remained stable after extensive passaging and generation of mono-clones. This behavior is consistent with a hybrid cell line arising from cell–cell fusion. Further genetic analysis revealed that MGC-803 originated from donors with different genetic ancestries, one African (HeLa) and the other Asian. Transcriptomic analysis demonstrated that MGC-803 closely resembles HeLa and another nasopharyngeal–HeLa hybrid cell line CNE-2. Based on these findings, we conclude that MGC-803 is a hybrid cell line derived from HeLa and other cells, the latter derived from a different patient with Asian genetic ancestry.

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Data availability

The raw RNA-seq data generated in this study are available in GEO under accession number GSM7113071, GSM7113072, GSM7122511, GSM7567347 and GSM7567348. Other data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Change history

Abbreviations

CCLE:

Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia

CCTCC:

China Center for Type Culture Collection

HPV18:

Human papilloma virus 18

MSI:

Microsatellite instability

STR:

Short tandem repeat

TPM:

Transcripts per million reads

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Funding

This work was supported by the financial support of the National Science and Technology Infrastructure Grants (NSTI-BMCR20, NSTI-BMCR21, NSTI-BMCR22), the Science and Technology Innovation Grants of Hubei province (2021CFB357) and Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation (2023AFA015) to Dr. Chao Shen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

    Sanfu Qu & Chao Shen

  2. China Center for Type Culture Collection, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Meimei Yang, Jing He, Sixuan Xia, Yudong Wang, Jun Xiong, Cong Liao, Nan Li, Sanfu Qu & Chao Shen

Authors
  1. Meimei Yang
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  2. Jing He
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  3. Sixuan Xia
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  4. Yudong Wang
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  5. Jun Xiong
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  6. Cong Liao
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  7. Nan Li
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  8. Sanfu Qu
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  9. Chao Shen
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Contributions

Meimei Yang: methodology, writing—review and editing. Jing He: conceptualization, methodology. Sixuan Xia: software. Yudong Wang: data curation, conceptualization. Jun Xiong: writing—original draft. Cong Liao: writing—original draft. Nan Li: software, validation. Sanfu Qu: data curation. Chao Shen: visualization, investigation, supervision.

The work reported in the paper has been performed by the authors, unless clearly specified in the text.

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Correspondence to Chao Shen.

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Yang, M., He, J., Xia, S. et al. Investigation of the mixed origins of the MGC-803 cell line reveals that it is a hybrid cell line derived from HeLa. Human Cell 37, 560–566 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13577-023-01011-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13577-023-01011-4

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