Jeffrey Perkel | Jul 18, 2004 | 2 min read
Nearly 35 years since Stanford researcher Leonard Herzenberg and colleagues developed the first fluorescence activated cell sorter (FACS), the instrument has become the immunologists' key tool. Immunology journals are chock-full of flow-cytometry profiles, the characteristic plots that such instruments produce.But cytometry is just half the story. The instruments also allow researchers to purify specific cell populations based on the presence or absence of particular characteristics. And therein