Facilities

The Cell Sorter Facility includes the following instruments and capabilities for flow cytometry: TAC, Room S617 houses 3 high-speed sorters: a BD FACSVantage SE, a BD Aria, and a Dako MoFlo. Cells can be sorted at the rate of 20K/sec. at 99+% purity, using a variety of commonly used fluorochromes, eg. FITC, GFP, YFP, PE, PE-Cy5, APC, APC-CY7, PE-CY7, CY5, Texas Red, RFP, Alexa 568, Alexa 594, Alexa 680/700, Pacific Blue, 7-AAD and PI. The MoFlo has 7-color, Vantage SE  8-color and the Aria has 10-color capability. Cells can be sorted into 5 or 15ml tubes or into various plates as single or multiple cells/well or onto microscope slides for analysis. All sorters are capable of simultaneous 4-way sorting. Vantage SE and Aria  are also equipped with aerosol management systems making them suitable for sorting live human, primate or other potentially biohazardous cells. The SE and MoFlo have dedicated operators (Tom Taylor and Gouzel Tokmoulina) who will help with experimental design and running your samples. The Aria can be user operated for sorting and multicolor analysis by trained individuals or can be operated by the facility; contact Geoff Lyon about using the Aria or having him run your samples. Users must come to the facility to reserve time on sorters.

TAC, Room 613 has 7 user-operated analyzers (BD LSR II, LSR II Green, 4 BD FACSCaliburs and 1 BD FACScan). The Caliburs can analyze up to 4 colors with 488 nm and 633 nm excitation lasers while the FACScan can analyze 3 colors from a single 488 nm laser.

The LSRII has 4 lasers (488 nm blue, 633 nm red, 407 nm violet and a 355 nm UV laser) and can detect up to 12 colors. There are also 4 lasers on LSR II Green: 405 nm, 488 nm, 532 nm (Green) and 635 nm , with 12-color capability.

Some of our machines are equipped with the FACSFlow fluidics stabilization system and the FACSLoader for automatic processing of samples. Machines are checked daily for optimal performance and Don Foster is available during working hours to troubleshoot and can arrange training by appointment.