Abstract

T lymphocytes are critical for effective immunity and the ability to study their behavior in synthetic media in vitro facilitates major discoveries in their development, function, and fate. However, the composition of human plasma differs from synthetic media and we hypothesized that these differences could have important effects on cell physiology. We therefore compared T lymphocyte activation in human plasma-like medium (HPLM) to RPMI supplemented with dialyzed FBS (RPMIdFBS) and found that it entrained markedly different transcriptional responses. We also found that the concentration of calcium in RPMIdFBS is six-fold lower than HPLM causing altered T cell activation which could be reversed by calcium addition. Thus, investigators should be cognizant of differences between commonly used media formulations and HPLM which is based on the in vivo plasma environment as these could profoundly affect their experimental results. Physiologic media may be a valuable new way to study immune cells in culture.