What is "tissue culture"

Culture \Cul"ture\ (k?l"t?r; 135), n. [F. culture, L. cultura, fr. colere to till, cultivate; of uncertain origin. Cf. Colony.]

1. The act or practice of cultivating, or of preparing the earth for seed and raising crops by tillage; as, the culture of the soil.

2. The act of, or any labor or means employed for, training, disciplining, or refining the moral and intellectual nature of man; as, the culture of the mind.

   If vain our toil We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.
   --Pepe.

3. The state of being cultivated; result of cultivation; physical improvement; enlightenment and discipline acquired by mental and moral training; civilization; refinement in manners and taste.

   What the Greeks expressed by their paidei`a, the Romans by their humanitas, we less happily try to express by the more artificial word culture.
   --J. C. Shairp.

   The list of all the items of the general life of a people represents that whole which we call its culture.
   --Tylor.

4. (Biol.)

   1. The cultivation of bacteria or other organisms (such as fungi or eukaryotic cells from mulitcellular organisms) in artificial media or under artificial conditions.

   2. The collection of organisms resulting from such a cultivation.

      Note: The growth of cells obtained from multicellular animals or plants in artificial media is called tissue culture.

      Note: The word is used adjectively with the above senses in many phrases, such as: culture medium, any one of the various mixtures of gelatin, meat extracts, etc., in which organisms cultivated; culture flask, culture oven, culture tube, gelatin culture, plate culture, etc.

5. (Cartography) Those details of a map, collectively, which do not represent natural features of the area delineated, as names and the symbols for towns, roads, houses, bridges, meridians, and parallels.

   Culture fluid, Culture medium a fluid in which microscopic organisms are made to develop, either for purposes of study or as a means of modifying their virulence. If the fluid is gelled by, for example, the use of agar, it then is called, depending on the vessel in which the gelled medium is contained, a plate, a slant, or a stab.

n. 1 the process or technique of propagating tissue (either cells or plants) in a culture medium 2 the culture of tissue grown by this process

Tissue culture is the growth of tissues or cells separate from the organism. This is typically facilitated via use of a liquid, semi-solid, or solid growth medium, such as broth or agar. Tissue culture commonly refers to the culture of animal cells and tissues, with the more specific term plant tissue culture being used for plants. The term "tissue culture" was coined by American pathologist Montrose Thomas Burrows, M.D.