International standards and resources
There is no international standard for cell biology terms, but Molecular cell biology (8th edition; H Lodish et al, WH Freeman, New York, 2016) has a good glossary.
Cell lines have varied names and abbreviations, and there are no standards for how they are written.
The Society for In Vitro Biology provides advice on terminology in the paper Terminology associated with cell, tissue and organ culture; molecular biology; and molecular genetics(Opens in a new tab/window).
Australian conventions and resources
CellBank Australia(Opens in a new tab/window) provides a list of Australian cell lines.
The lack of standards for cell line names means that many inconsistencies occur in cell line lists (e.g. fibroblast, Fibroblast). We recommend setting an internal style for publications and maintaining consistency.
Terms to watch out for:
in vitro, in vivo [use roman type (not italic) and no hyphen for these terms]
Cell types
Use lower case for the names of cell types, except for proper nouns:
epithelial cell keratinocycte squamous cell lymphocyte natural killer cell Hensen cell Purkinje cell
Cell culture medium
Use lower case for names of culture media (apart from any proper nouns). Do not include the possessive s for a medium named after a person:
minimum essential medium (MEM) Fisher medium not Fisher’s medium
Reminder. Just because the abbreviation of a term is made up of capitals, it does not mean that the term has initial capitals when it is spelt out.
Cell structure
Names of cell organelles and structures do not have an initial capital letter unless the name includes a proper noun:
nucleus ribosome mitochondrion endoplasmic reticulum Golgi complex flagellum chloroplast
Did you know? The Golgi complex is named after Camillo Golgi (1843–1926), an Italian physician, biologist, pathologist, scientist and Nobel laureate.
Cell division and cell cycle
The cell cycle is made up of an interphase, when the cell is either undergoing normal functions or preparing to divide, and the actual process of division, which is called either mitosis (body cells) or meiosis (reproductive cells).
Cell division stages are presented in lower case:
metaphase telophase
Interphase stages are denoted by G1 (resting/normal function), S (synthesis of DNA ready for cell division) and G2 (growth and preparation for division), and are written with a hyphen:
S-phase G1-phase
Stem cells
Use lower case for types of stem cells:
human embryonic stems cells induced pluripotent stem cells adult stem cells
Abbreviations of stem cell names can take a plural s where required, but check your organisation’s preferred style and maintain consistency:
HESCs iPSCs ASCs
Reminder. Just because the abbreviation of a term is made up of capitals, it does not mean that the term has initial capitals when it is spelt out.