Data from: Magnetic field inhomogeneities due to CO 2 incubator shelves: a source of experimental confounding and variability?

A thorough assessment of the static magnetic field (SMF) inside a CO2 incubator allowed us to identify non-negligible inhomogeneities close to the floor, ceiling, walls and the door. Given that incubator's shelves are made of a non-magnetic stainless steel alloy, we did not expect any important effect of them on the SMF. Surprisingly, we did find relatively strong distortion of the SMF due to shelves. Indeed, our high-resolution maps of the SMF revealed that distortion is such that field intensities differing by a factor of up to 36 were measured on the surface of the shelf at locations only few millimetres apart from each other. Furthermore, the most intense of these fields was around five times greater than the ones found inside the incubator (without the metallic shelves in), while the lowest one was around 10 times lower, reaching the so-called hypomagnetic field range. Our findings, together with a survey of the literature on biological effects of hypomagnetic fields, soundly support the idea that SMF inhomogeneities inside incubators, especially due to shelves' holes, are a potential source of confounding and variability in experiments with cell cultures kept in an incubator.

我们对CO₂培养箱内的静态磁场（static magnetic field, SMF）开展了全面评估，结果发现其靠近箱底、箱顶、箱壁与箱门处存在不容忽视的不均匀性。鉴于该培养箱的搁板由非磁性不锈钢合金制成，我们原本并未预料到搁板会对静态磁场产生显著影响。但令人意外的是，我们确实发现搁板引发了较为显著的静态磁场畸变。事实上，我们绘制的静态磁场高分辨率分布图显示，搁板表面仅相距数毫米的不同点位，其磁场强度比值最高可达36倍。此外，这些畸变场中最强的强度约为移除金属搁板后培养箱内原磁场的5倍，而最弱的强度仅为原磁场的1/10左右，达到了所谓的亚磁场（hypomagnetic field）范围。我们的研究结果，结合对亚磁场生物学效应相关文献的调研，有力地支持了这一观点：培养箱内的静态磁场不均匀性——尤其是由搁板开孔引发的不均匀性——可能是导致培养箱内细胞培养实验出现混杂效应与实验变异性的潜在诱因。