Cytometry and Cell Sorting Facility

The Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting Facility (Flow) at the CDR, under the direction of Christopher Bare, provides high precision fluorescence probe based analysis and isolation of biological particles including intact viable cells and extracellular vesicles (EV). The Flow facility houses a five laser Invitrogen Bigfoot Cell Sorter capable of discriminating up to 35 separate fluorescent probes on thousands of particles per second, then collecting defined subpopulations of particles for further study in bulk tubes or as individuals in microwells. In addition, Flow staff provide expert knowledge, software training, technology assessment, and project consultation. The highly configurable and adaptable nature of flow allows for a nearly limitless catalogue of applications to obtain data of exceptional granularity. The precision of sorting enables significant target enrichment prior to subsequent exploration in other research modalities. Central to our research is the ability to analyze the various defined populations of intracellular and extracellular compartments from cells in culture, brain tissue, and blood. The instrument allows our researchers to obtain the highest-quality data from every sample to achieve increasingly challenging scientific goals defined within ongoing projects in the CDR and extend those research directions.