Table 1.

Treatment of glass culture tubes by serial transfer of cell-free encystment medium from one tube to another. Tubes were pre-treated for 5 min with 47% LG containing either adult bovine serum (ABS) or asialofetuin (ASF) prior to washing and use with encystment cultures. First two rows of results show encystment efficiency using the conventional encystment method.

Pre-treatment of glass culture tubes (percentage of control)
Culture conditions			ABS 5% (v/v)	ASF 0.1 (μg/ml)
Controls (with cells)	No ABS or ASF		27.0 ± 7.1	32.4 ± 3.9
	With ABS or ASF		82.8 ± 17.0	57.4 ± 4.6
Transfer of cell-free medium along a series of glass culture tubes	Culture tube 1		65.1 ± 6.5	40.3 ± 6.2
	Culture tube 2		58.3 ± 3.2	26.5 ± 7.8
	Culture tube 3		40.9 ± 2.3	21.2 ± 8.0
	Culture tube 4		40.6 ± 1.6	24.0 ± 10.8