Flow Cytometry Lab

BD FACS Aria II Flow cytometer

The FACSAria II from Becton Dickinson (BD Biocsiences, San Jose, USA) is a high speed cell sorter for measuring and sorting fluorescently labelled cells. These cells can be prokaryotic (e.g. bacteria) or eukaryotic (e.g. mammalian) with a minimum size of 0.2 um (maximum 100 um). Fluorescence staining is usually performed with antibodies specific to the proteins of interest, which can be intra-cellular or on the cell surface. These primary antibodies are conjugated to a fluorescent dye, or a fluorescent secondary antibody may be used. Fluorescent substrates or compounds can also be detected.

A laser excites the fluorescent dyes bound to the cells. The emitted light has a longer wavelength and passes through a bandpass filter to shut out the excitatory and other unwanted light. The strength of this fluorescent light is measured with a detector (PMT) for each cell and is displayed in form of a histogram.

BD FACSVerse Flow cytometer

The BD FACSVerse™ flow cytometer was engineered from the ground up to offer remarkable performance, flexibility, and ease of operation for research applications using up to 10 parameters.