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Re:Woman with Immortal Cells by tocomment on Wednesday December 29, 2010 @11:42AM (#2049215)
Why do the cells have more chromosomes? How can they be useful if they're so different from normal human cells?
Re:Woman with Immortal Cells by gus_massa on Wednesday December 29, 2010 @03:30PM (#2050055)
Usually (always?) tumor cell are not only immortal, they also have problems with the chromosome copy process. The extra chromosomes are copies of the normal chromosomes. The number varies in every cell line to cell line.

So these cells are different, but most of their molecules are exactly like the molecules of a normal person. So they are useful to study most of the properties of humans cells.