Low-Glucose DMEM with Phenol Red, Glutamine and Pyruvate

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• DMEM (Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium)DMEM (Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium) is a basal cell culture medium derived from Eagle's Minimal Essential Medium by raising the amino acid and vitamin concentrations roughly fourfold. It is supplied in high-glucose (4,500 mg/L, 25 mM) and low-glucose (1,000 mg/L, 5.6 mM) forms, buffered with 3,700 mg/L sodium bicarbonate, and requires serum or a defined supplement plus a CO2 atmosphere to hold physiological pH. DMEM is the default medium for adherent lines such as HEK293, HeLa, NIH/3T3, Vero and CHO-derived adherent cultures, and for most primary fibroblasts.
• Glucose solution in cell cultureA cell culture glucose solution is a concentrated sterile D-glucose stock, commonly supplied at 300-450 g/L (30-45% w/v), used to supplement basal media and to feed cultures that consume glucose faster than the medium supplies it. D-glucose has a molecular weight of 180.16, so 1 g/L equals 5.55 mM: standard media run from 1 g/L (5.5 mM) in low-glucose DMEM through 2 g/L (11.1 mM) in RPMI 1640 to 4.5 g/L (25 mM) in high-glucose DMEM. Glucose is added to prevent depletion in long or high-density cultures, and it is normally sterile-filtered rather than autoclaved, because heating glucose with amino acids produces browning reaction products.
• EMEM vs DMEM: What the Modification Actually ChangedEMEM (Eagle's Minimum Essential Medium, also sold as MEM) and DMEM (Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium) are the same medium one generation apart: DMEM is Eagle's formulation enriched, with roughly four times the vitamins, about twice most amino acids, twice the glutamine, added glycine and serine, ferric nitrate, and 3.7 g/L sodium bicarbonate against EMEM's 1.5-2.2 g/L. The practical consequence is that DMEM supports fast-growing, metabolically demanding lines such as HEK293 and NIH/3T3, while EMEM suits slower, less demanding adherent cells and primary lines - and because DMEM's higher bicarbonate is formulated for 10% CO2 while EMEM's suits 5%, the two are not interchangeable without checking your incubator.