MEM Alpha Medium with Phenol Red and L-Glutamine

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• MEM Alpha (α-MEM) and Minimum Essential MediumMEM alpha (α-MEM) is Eagle's Minimum Essential Medium enriched with all the non-essential amino acids, sodium pyruvate, lipoic acid, ascorbic acid, biotin and vitamin B12, and is supplied either with or without ribonucleosides and deoxyribonucleosides. It uses the same salt base as MEM — 2,200 mg/L sodium bicarbonate matched to a 5% CO2 atmosphere, 1,000 mg/L glucose and 1.8 mM calcium — and is the standard medium for mesenchymal stromal cells, bone marrow cultures, osteoblasts, CHO-DXB11 and CHO-DG44 selection, and many primary cell types. The nucleoside-free version is required for HAT and methotrexate-based selection systems.
• 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.