The Flow Cytometry Service (FCS) maintains five flow cytometers, two of which are also cell sorters. The traditional cell sorter we have is a Beckman-Coulter Elite ESP, while our newest sorter (acquired in 2003) is the “state of the art” high speed sorter, the DakoCytomation MoFlo. All of the others are bench top flow cytometers that are strictly analyzers. Each instrument is capable of analyzing and sorting (Elite and MoFlo) thousands of cells/particles per second. Five to eleven parameters (relative size, granularity, and up to three/nine colors of emitted fluorescence) can be measured simultaneously and correlated particle by particle. The signals can be instantly collected into histograms for immediate results and/or stored as raw data for experimental analysis later. The data may also be transmitted to a stand-alone FCS PC workstation for analysis, either individually or in batch, and the results printed as user-designed hard copies of publishable quality.

Various uses of flow cytometry include measurements of autofluorescent proteins, antigen or ligand density, apoptosis, enzyme activity, DNA and RNA content, membrane potential, cytokine receptors and its synthesis, drug uptake and efflux, phagocytosis and viability obtained from cells, isolated nuclei, organelles or microorganisms. Changes in cell cycle, intracellular pH, intracellular calcium, intracellular glutathione and oxidative burst can be also detected with these instruments. Time may be used as a parameter for kinetic studies.

The FCS also maintains an automatic magnetic bead sorter (autoMACS from Miltenyi Biotec) that is often used as a pre-sorter to enrich rare populations of cells before sorting for greater purity on one of our sorting flow cytometers.