Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting Core Lab Summary
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Flow Cytometry
The UTMB Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting Core Lab has been providing investigators with state-of-the-art flow cytometry instrumentation and support for over 20 years. The Flow Cytometry Core is available to all departments and investigators at UTMB. The Flow Cytometry Core is supported through recharge rates and additional support from the University. Currently, the Flow Cytometry Core is located in the Medical Research Building, where all of the facility instruments and staff are housed. The facility is currently managed by one full time employee, one part time employee and a faculty director. The staff provide a wide range of support to investigators including, cell sorting, data acquisition, instrument training, data analysis, panel design, technical advice and experimental design. A variety of assays are performed regularly at the facility those assays include high parameter immunophenotyping, intracellular and intra-nuclear staining for cytokines and transcription factors, fluorescent protein expression, cell cycle and proliferation, apoptosis, growth factors and signaling. The facility currently houses one BD FACSAria Fusion, one BD FACSymphony A5 SE, one BD LSRFortessa, one Bio-Rad Bio-Plex 200 system, one Bio-Rad Bio-Plex II wash station, one CTL Immunospot S6 M2, six Miltenyi MidiMACS Magnets, and one high-speed computer available for data analysis. The FACSAria Fusion is fully enclosed in a Class II Type A2 biosafety cabinet for agents that require BSL-2 safety precautions. The FACSAria Fusion cell sorter is a 4 laser 15 fluorescent detector system. This instrument is capable of sorting cells into tubes, plates or slides at high speed. There are a variety of different downstream applications of cell sorting including, DNA/RNA isolation, next-generation sequencing, functional assays, sterile cell culture, single-cell cloning and injection back into an animal are a few examples. The eight Miltenyi MidiMACS magnets are available for rent. These magnets can be used for Magnet bead sorting and/or enrichment. The FACSymphony A5 SE is a spectral instrument equipped with 5 lasers and 50 detectors. This system can analyze high order spectral or conventional flow cytometry panels. The LSRFortessa is a 5 laser 18 fluorescent detector instrument capable of analyzing high end flow cytometry panels. The FACSymphony and LSRFortessa are both equipped with a high-throughput system (HTS) which allows investigators to run 96 or 384 well plates. The Bio-Rad Bio-Plex 200 is a bead based multiplex system capable of analyzing over 100 analytes through various bead assays. The Bio-Rad Bio-Plex II wash station is capable of supporting plate-based assays by automatically washing plates for various different plate-based assays. The CTL Immunospot S6 M2 elispot machine allows investigators to read up to 6 fluorospots as well as enzymatic spots. The facility house one high-speed computer for data analysis, complete with a FlowJo license and is always available to facilitate with data analysis. The facility manages a site license for data analysis (FlowJo) and provides cloud-based data storage for investigators.