 In one form of flow cytometry used at Yale, tissues in biological samples are broken down into individual cells, which are then tagged with fluorescent material coupled to antibodies that can differentiate the cells according to their structure and function. Each cell then passes through laser beams, emiting colors that helps further categorize them. |
Research at Yale involving flow cytometry -- a high-tech cellular "turnstile" employing lasers and fluorescent dyes -- will be discussed in the next Dean's Workshop at the School of Medicine on Friday, April 28.
The event, which is open to members of the Yale community, will take place 1-3 p.m. in the Anlyan Center auditorium, 300 Cedar St.
In the workshop, Dr. Mark J. Shlomchik, professor of laboratory medicine and immunobiology and director of the medical school's Cell Sorting Facility, will join five other Yale scientists in a presentation of flow cytometry research.
Similar to the common turnstile, which transforms chaotic crowds into neat, single-file streams of people, flow cytometry allows Yale biologists to count, sort and characterize the function of each of the millions of cells in a biological sample at a rate as high as 30,000 cells per second.
Flow cytometry has been a mainstay of immunology research since it was first introduced in the 1970s, but with recent advances in photonics, fluorescent tagging and computation horsepower, the technique is making inroads into many other fields, including stem cell biology and cancer research. Refinements of flow cytometry are allowing scientists to precisely quantify and characterize cell-cycle phase, cell proliferation, calcium signaling and intracellular molecular interactions.
In one form of flow cytometry used at Yale, tissues are broken down into individual cells that are then tagged with fluorophores, fluorescent material coupled to antibodies that can differentiate cells according to their structure or function. Next, each cell is suspended in solution in its own bubble, and the bubbles flow rapidly -- 1.5 million per minute -- through a tube about the diameter of a human hair, passing one at a time through a convergence of laser beams at several wavelengths. As the lasers excite the fluorophores, each cell emits as many as 12 colors, depending on which antibodies they have bound. Detectors record each cell's color signature and send the information to a computer that keeps a running count of the cells and categorizes them, and each category is sorted by high-voltage plates into a separate receptacle.
The School of Medicine has a state-of-the-art flow cytometry facility used by 117 different principal investigators and about 500 individual researchers.
-- By Peter Farley, managing editor,
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