Recent developments in the Core Laboratory...
We have just installed our new BD Biosciences FACSAria benchtop cell sorter. Our unit is equipped with three lasers and have the extended detector clusters, allowing detection of up to 6 fluorochromes off the 488 nm laser, three off the 633 nm red, and three off the 405 nm violet laser diode. Specialized PE and APC tandem dyes like PE-Texas Red, PE-Cy5.5 and APC-Cy5.5 can be analyzed on this instrument, as well as multiple quantum dots and long violet probes like Pacific Orange. We plan to begin scheduled sorting with this instrument in November 2006.
Our Compucyte LSC2 laser scanning cytometer has been upgraded to the new iCys configuration. This upgrade will greatly improve our sample data handling capabilities, including analysis of 96-well plates and more efficient analysis of tissue sections. We will be installing a high-resolution scanning module capable of <0.5 µm resolution, and a DPSS 561 nm laser on this instrument by the end of 2006.
Violet laser for the FACSVantage DiVa. We have installed a Power Technology dual-module violet laser diode on the FACSVantage DiVa. This unit will give us 100 mW of 405 nm violet laser light on the cell sorter, allowing sorting with Cascade Blue, Alexa Fluor 405, Pacific Blue, and Cyan Fluorescence Protein (for CFP-YFP FRET).
Vanguard 355 nm mode-locked UV laser. We now have a Spectra-Physics Vanguard 355 nm 350 mW mode-locked solid state laser installed on our FACSVantage DiVa. This laser replaces our krypton-ion laser previously used for Hoechst SP analysis and indo-1 and requires no water cooling, completing our transition to all air-cooled lasers on our sorter (begun with our iCyt Lyt-200 488 nm laser). It uses similar technology to our Lightwave Electronics XCyte 355 nm solid state laser on our LSR II. UV sorts can now be scheduled.
NEW! DPSS 561 nm laser on the BD LSR II. We have tested a Melles Griot diode-pumped solid state (DPSS) 561 nm yellow-green laser on our BD LSR II. This laser provides better excitation of phycoerythrin and DsRed with lower autofluorescence backgrounds, and allows the simultaneous analysis of fluorescein or GFP without the laser light contamination encountered with green laser sources. More information is here.
