Abstract
Trypsin, the proteolytic enzyme derived from pancreatic tissue, has long been a common agent used in tissue culture work. It is used to separate cells, either: 1. from intact animal tissue for primary explants or 2. from the bottom of culture flasks for further investigation. In fact, many workers use trypsin for both procedures and its use could easily be called widespread in the tissue culture field.|While trying to improve the method of separating cells from intact tissue for primary explants as mentioned above and using cellular respiration as an indication of viability, we observed that the respiration of trypsin treated cells was consistently higher than the respiration of our controls. The tissue we were using was rat kidney. The controls were merely slices of tissue from the second half of the same kidney which had not been exposed to trypsin. This observation and because of the widespread use of trypsin in tissue culture work led us to study the effect of trypsin on the respiration of tissues.