Since its invention in the 1960s, flow cytometry—a technique used to identify and sort specific populations of cells—has extended its reach beyond immunol-ogists to those performing diverse assays in both the basic and clinical research arenas. Whether you are using the technology to detect rare stem cells or to diagnose blood disorders, the vast improvements in the machines themselves in recent years has upped the need for robust software. “With the new instrumentation that’s coming out, it is just going to encourage people to collect more data,” says Ryan Duggan, technical director of University of Chicago’s flow cytometry core facility. For example, instruments can now detect 20,000 “events”—such as a cell or piece of debris—in a single second, and can detect cells labeled with nearly 20 different fluorochromes in a single run.
The majority of flow cytometry users settle into one type of software that they’re most comfortable with. As ...
