Flow cytometry

The School of Cancer Sciences Flow Cytometry Service provides a chargeable Flow Cytometric analysis facility, for research purposes, to the School of Cancer Sciences as well as the wider academic community.

The "flagship" of the Flow Cytometric analysis facility is a fully maintained, end user operated, 15 colour, three laser (red He-Ne, 488nm solid state and 405nm solid state) Becton Dickinson LSRII, using DiVa 6.1 software for data acquisition.
This facility is supported by two end user operated 4 colour Beckman Coulter XL flow cytometers - one with the Multi Carousel Loader option, both using Coulter System II software for data acquisition.

An offline analysis workstation is also available for data analysis using Coulter System II, Coulter EXPO, or WinMDI software. The School has invested in 24 FlowJo licences which are distributed among workgroups in the School. Wincycle is available for cell cycle deconvolution.

The conventional Flow Cytometric analysis facility has been recently supplemented following the acquisition of an Amnis ImageStream which offers high resolution microscopy and flow cytometry combined in a single instrument. Brightfield, darkfield and up to four fluorescence images are generated simultaneously from every cell. Flow Cytometric cell sorting is no longer available.

Charges...

Analysis Charges, per hour, using the BD LSRII

from 1st November 2009 Cancer Sciences University of Birmingham External
End-User Operated £24.00 £50.00 £60.00

 

Analysis Charges, per hour, using the Coulter XL or XL-MCL

from 1st November 2009 Cancer Sciences University of Birmingham External
End-User Operated £11.00 £50.00 £60.00
Service Operated £50.00 £50.00 £60.00

 

Learning resources...

Books on flow cytometry

Shapiro, H.M. (2003) Practical Flow Cytometry. NEW 4th Edition. Wiley Inc., New York.
Ormerod, M.G. (1999). Flow Cytometry. 2 nd edition. Bios, Oxford. ISBN 1 85996 107 X.

Radbruch, A. (ed.) (1992) Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

Givan, A.L. (1992) Flow Cytometry. First Principles. Wiley-Liss, New York.

Watson, J.V. (1991) Introduction to Flow Cytometry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Melamed, M.R., Lindmo, T. and Mendelsohn, M.I. (eds.) (1990) Flow Cytometry and Sorting. 2nd Edition. Wiley-Liss, Inc., New York.

Practical books on flow cytometry

Ormerod, MG (ed.) (2000) Flow Cytometry. A Practical Approach. 3rd edn. IRL Press at Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Robinson, J.P., Darzynkiewicz, Z., Dean, P., Orfao, A., Rabinovitch, P., Stewart, C., Tanke, H. and Wheeless, L. (1999). Current Protocols in Cytometry. Wiley, New York.

Jaroszeski, M.J. and Heller, R. (eds.) (1998) Flow Cytometry Protocols. Methods in Molecular Biology, 91, Humana Press, Towowa, NJ.

Darzynkiewicz, Z., Robinson, J.P. and Crissman, H.A. (eds) (1994) Flow Cytometry. Methods in Cell Biology, 41 & 42, Academic Press, Inc, San Diego.

Macey, M.G. (ed.) (1994) Flow Cytometry: Clinical Applications. Blackwell Scientific, Oxford.

Bauer, K.D., Duque, R.E. and Shankey, T.V. (eds)(1992) Clinical Flow Cytometry Principles and Applications Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore.

Journals

The “only” flow cytometry journal is Cytometry (Wiley), the Journal of the International Society for Analytical Cytology.

Websites

CR UK Research Institute (London) includes some useful bench methods

Cytonet UK includes a download for WinMDI

Invitrogen are developing an education section at http://www.invitrogen.com/site/us/en/home/support/Tutorials.html which comprises 5 online tutorials including some fluorescence basics which apply to all fluorescence applications, including microscopy.

AbD Serotec at http://www.ab-direct.com/support/introduction_to_flow_cytometry-685.html  host an introduction to flow cytometry which includes some sample preparation methods.

DeNovo Software at http://flowbook.denovosoftware.com/ host an online version of M.G.Omerod's most recent book; Flow Cytometry - A Basic Introduction.

Purdue University Flow Cytometry includes a manual/tutorial for WinMDI & lots more besides.

The International Society for Analytical Cytology (ISAC)