Inexpensive low-oxygen incubators.

Although the evidence is overwhelming that ambient oxygen is at least somewhat damaging to most normal cells in culture, the expense and effort involved has resulted in few laboratories growing their cells under physiological oxygen conditions. We here describe how to produce, from commercially available plastic wide-mouth jars, very simple gas-tight containers that can be flushed with prepared gas mixtures to produce low-oxygen environments for standard cell culture. This permits any laboratory to easily try the effects of physiological oxygen on their system without the need for dedicated incubators and substantial monetary investments.