A low-profile child of the '60s, flow cytometry didn't capture the imagination of most researchers until the early 1980s. The decade saw the birth of the AIDS epidemic, and as attention focused on HIV, researchers needed a method to accurately and reproducibly characterize immune cells. Flow cytometry was suddenly thrust into the spotlight.
COMPLETE KITS: Bio-Rad’s KINESIS reagent kits for flow cytometry assays A flow cytometer shines one or more lasers on a sample of cells in suspension, each of which scatters the light and emits fluorescence in response. For each cell that passes, the cytometer measures low-angle forward scatter intensity-which is proportional to the cell's diameter-and the orthogonal- scatter intensity, indicative of the number of granular structures in the cell. The majority of flow cytometers are used in clinical settings for complete cell counts, says Eric Martz, director of the flow cytometry lab at the University of Massachusetts in ...
