Welcome to the Flow Cytometry Facility

Flow cytometry plays a significant role in the understanding of many biological processes, due to its ability to simultaneously analyse multiple parameters on individual cells. For example, in immune function studies it is rare to find a unique antigen on the cell surface enabling a single diagnostic marker to identify the cell type. Consequently, most cell subpopulations must be characterized by analyzing multiple expression of different antigens per cell simultaneously.

Significant is the quantitative nature of the data collected. Each individual cell is a distinct experimental source and thus can be used in statistical regimes to gain information of significant statistical accuracy when the data is collected in a correlated manner.

This technology enables specific subpopulations of cells to be characterised and, if required, isolated for further investigation e.g. for colony assays, cell lines, RNA analysis, FISH, microarrays, PCR and cell micromanipulation.