Flow Cytometry Core Facility
Flow cytometry is a powerful tool for the multiparameter analysis of particles, micro-organisms and cells of all types. The Aberdeen Cytometry Core Facility (ACCF) provides a state-of-the-art multi-user facility providing analytical and sorting capacities to it users. Access to ACCF is provided to faculty and staff from within the University of Aberdeen on a fee-for-service basis. ACCF is also open to working with scientists who are not associated with the University of Aberdeen as well as being open to collaborative research projects. The centre is housed within the Institute of Medical Sciences building on the Foresterhill campus.
Services
User training including:
- instrument specific training
- guidance with sample preparation
- assistance with experimental design
- machine troubleshooting
Experimental assistance:
- Customer orientated consulting
- Sourcing of reagents and techniques
- Investigating alternative methods
- Cell or analyte analysis- of up to 20 different parameters measured in parallel
- Cell sorting
- Microbiological cytometry: analysis of bacteria, yeast, phytoplankton etc
- Plant cytometry: analyses of plant protoplast.
- State of the art apoptosis, proliferation and functional (e.g. Ca2+, membrane potential) assays.
- Gene reporter assay (e.g. GFP, lacZ)
- PhosFlow: intracellular phosphor-protein assay (e.g. pSTAT, p38, MAPK)
- DNA content: cell cycle or DNA ploidy analysis
Data collection:
- Acquisition
- Analysis
- Interpretation
- Assistance with data presentation for presentation and publication
- Cell and analyte analysis
Flow Cytometers
- BD Calibur with two lasers and 4 parameters detection capability
- BD Fortessa with five lasers and 18 parameters detection capability
- BD LSRII with four lasers and 15 parameters detection capability
Cell Counter
- Beckman Coulter Z2
Cell Sorting
BD DiVa is a high speed digital cell sorter, equipped with three lasers (a 488nm argon laser; a 647nm red diode laser and a 350nm UV laser) for eight colour, four way sorting. Sorting of any particle or cell at a velocity of up to 40 000 events/sec that can be sorted into different types of devices e.g. glass slides, cloning in 96-well microtiter plates or other tubes for down-stream culture or molecular analysis. Rare cell retrieval (<0.1% population) sorted to a final purity of 99% can be achieved.
Multiplexing
- BD FACSArray with a green laser capable of detecting 2 colours (PE and PE-Cy7) and 635nm red laser capable of detecting 2 colours (APC and APC-Cy7)
- Bio-Plex 200 with a green laser and 2 colour (PE and PE-Cy7) and 635nm red laser and 2 colours (APC and APC-Cy7). This bead based assay system makes it possible to analyse proteins in solution. Examples of proteins include cytokines, phosphoproteins, growth factors, kinases and transcription factors.
- Multiplex bead cytometry: simultaneous analyses of multiple analytes (e.g. cytokines or other proteins) in solution.
Data Analysis
- ModFit
- FlowJo
- WinMDI
- DiVa
- CellQuest
- FCS express
- Cyflogic