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Cos cell

(Science: cell culture) a cell line derived from the african green monkey and used for transfection and cloning. The cells are simian fibroblasts (cv 1 cells) transformed by sv40 that is deficient in the origin of replication region.

They express large t antigen constitutively and if transfected with a vector containing a normal sv40 origin have all the other early viral genes necessary to generate multiple copies of the vector and thus to give very high levels of expression.