Flow Cytometry

By Emily Cartwright, PhD

By Hunter Martinez

By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.

Kristy R. Howell, PhD

By Christina Towers, PhD

By Jody Bonnevier, PhD.

By Christina Towers, PhD.

1. Know your cytometer

Flow cytometry was developed to label and examine single cells with high throughput capacity using antibodies conjugated to fluorophores. The basic concept of flow cytometry is that a cell suspension is delivered as a single stream and is passed through a light source that uses detectors to generate data sets based off cellular properties. More specifically, the light emitted by fluorescently conjugated antibodies is channeled through selected filters to sort based off preset parameters or targets used.

The immune system is composed of a portion of T cells that express an invariant T cell receptor (TCR) alpha chain known as V alpha 24 J alpha 18. These highly conserved populations are referred to as iNKT populations and have the ability to rapidly produce cytokines following activation, making them hot targets for therapeutic research initiatives.