Cell and Tissue Analysis

Central to our service is a BD Biosciences FACSAria SORP flow cytometer which has a fixed-alignment, and a gel-coupled cuvette fiber optic interrogation point (13cm/sec) capable of acquiring 70,000 events/second, sort 20,000 cells/second (69cm/sec), can measure up to sixteen cell parameters (fourteen fluorochromes) and is equiped with four solid-state lasers. Typical laser beam size and shape is 9um height and 65um width.

BD FACSAria Filter Configuration PDF

The sixteen parameters include forward light scatter (photodiode detector, comparable to cell diameter), right angle light scatter (aka side-scatter, cellular granularity) and multiple bands of fluorescence through fourteen photomultiplier tubes with a spectral range from 200nm to 810nm. A compensation network separates interference from overlapping emission spectra. For analysis 70,000 cells/second can be acquired. Below the interrogation point and past the cuvette the stream is accelerated up to its maximum velocity of 70psi (69cm/sec) for high speed sorting. Four sort streams provide four way sorting of individual cells (approx. 30,000 cells/sec) as well as unidirectional 96-well deposition is easily accomplished with established gating. Any of the sixteen parameters may be used in establishing linear, rectangular or amorphous gating regions. Acquisition and analysis is performed with the BD FACSDiva^TM 6.0 software. Up to 10 million events may be acquired. There are three nozzle sizes to select, 70um (70psi & 35psi), 100um & 130um (20psi). Typically the size of the nozzle should be from 3-5 times larger than the cell diameter for stable sorting streams. The Aria processes from 10 - 30uL/minute of sample volume and sample concentrations vary according to the cell size and quality of cell preparation. For example lymphocytes can be submitted at 30,000,000 cells/mL whilte kertinocytes are usually kept at 5,000,000 cells/mL.

BD FACS Aria Compatible Labware

In addition a customer workstation is provided with diverse cytometry and graphics software to assist researchers in analysis and presentation of their work. To learn more about Flow Cytometry or how a flow cytometer works visit our links page which connects to some oustanding web sites.

The Olympus^® FLUOVIEW Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope is a point-scanning, pinhole-detection, laser based confocal fluorescence microscope that enables acquisition of high resoultion fluorescence and transmission images with high sensitivity. The system includes a fully integrated workstation which incorporates image acquisition and image analysis software with high resolution confocal optics. This allows Optical Sectioning & 3D Reconstruction, Time Lapse Observation, Nomarski, and Fluorescence and Subcellular Protein Localization. It is equipped with an air-cooled Argon laser with an emmission wavelength of 488nm and an air-cooled Krypton laser with two emmission lines at 568nm and 647nm.

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