4 – Experimental Design

Fluorochrome, antibodies and detectors are important. The journey of a thousand cells starts with a good fluorescent panel. The polychromatic panel is the combination of antibodies and fluorochromes. These will be used during the experiment to answer the biological question of interest. When you only need a few targets, the creation of the panel is relatively straightforward. It’s only when you start to get into more complex panels with multiple fluorochromes that overlap in excitation and emission gets more interesting.  FLUOROCHROMES Both full spectrum and traditional fluorescent flow cytometry rely on measuring the emission of the fluorochromes that are attached…

Here we are, at the end of an eventful year 2021. But with the promise of a new year 2022 to come. It has been a long year, filled with ups and downs. It is always good to reflect on the past year as we move to the future.  In Memoriam Sir Isaac Newton wrote “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” In the past year, we have lost some giants of our field including Zbigniew Darzynkiwicz, who contributed much in the areas of cell cycle analysis and apoptosis. Howard Shapiro, known for…

It is no secret that I am a very big fan of the Star Trek franchise. There are many good episodes and lessons explored in the 813+ episodes, 12 movies (and counting). Don’t worry, this blog is not going to review all 813, or even 5 of them. Instead, some of the lessons I have taken away from the show that have applicability to science and flow cytometry.  “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.”  (ST:TNG season 5, episode 2) This is probably one of my favorite episodes, which involves Picard and an alien trying to establish a common ground and learn…

Sun Tzu was a Chinese general and philosopher. His most famous writing is ‘The Art of War’, and has been studied by generals and CEOs, to glean ideas and strategies to help their missions. I was recently rereading this work and thought to myself if any of Sun Tzu’s lessons could apply to flow cytometry.  So I have identified 5 points that I think lend themselves to thinking about flow cytometry.  “Quickness is the essence of the war.” In flow cytometry, speed is of the essence. The longer the cells are out of their natural environment, the less happy they…

Mastering foundational concepts are imperative for successfully using any technique or system.  Robert Heinlein introduced the term ‘Grok’  in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Ever since then it has made its way into popular culture. To Grok something is to understand it intuitively, fully. As a cytometrist, there are several key concepts that you must grok to be successful in your career. These foundational concepts are the key tools that we use day in and day out to identify and characterize our cells of interest.  Cells Flow cytometry measures biological processes at the whole cell level. To do…

Developing variant calling and analysis pipelines for NGS sequenced data have become a norm in clinical labs. These pipelines include a strategic integration of several tools and techniques to identify molecular and structural variants. That eventually helps in the apt variant annotation and interpretation. This blog will delve into the concepts and intricacies of developing a “variant calling” pipeline using GATK. “Variant calling” can also be performed using tools other than GATK, such as FREEBAYES and SAMTOOLS.  In this blog, I will walk you through variant calling methods on Illumina germline RNASeq data. In the steps, wherever required, I will…

Flow cytometers are traditionally designed for measuring particles, like beads and cells. These tend to fall in the small micron size range. Looking at the relative size of different targets of biological interest, it is clear the most common targets for flow cytometry (cells) are comparatively large (figure 1). Figure 1:  Relative size of different biological targets of interest. Image modified from Bioninja.    In the visible spectrum, where most of the excitation light sources reside, it is clear the cells are larger than the light. This is important as one of the characteristics that we typically measure is the amount…

As the labeled cell passes through the interrogation point, it is illuminated by the excitation lasers. The fluorochromes, fluoresce; emitting photons of a higher wavelength than the excitation source. This is typically modeled using spectral viewers such as in the figure below, which shows the excitation (dashed lines) and emission (filled curves) for Brilliant Violet 421TM (purple) and Alexa Fluor 488Ⓡ (green).  Figure 1: Excitation and emission profiles of BV421TM and AF488Ⓡ  In traditional fluorescent flow cytometry (TFF), the instrument measures each fluorochrome off an individual detector. Since the detectors we use — photomultiplier tubes (PMT) and avalanche photodiodes (APD)…

Extracting specific cells still remains an important aspect of several emerging genomic techniques. Prior knowledge about the input cells helps to put the downstream results in context. The most common isolation technique is cell sorting, but it requires a single cell suspension and eliminates any spatial information about the microenvironment. Spatial transcriptomics is an emerging technique that can address some of these issues, but that is a topic for another blog.  So what does a researcher who needs to isolate a specific type of cell do? The answer lies in the technique of laser capture microdissection (LCM). Developed at the National…

Incorporating quality control as a part of the optimization process in  your flow cytometry protocol is important. Take a step back and consider how to build quality control tracking into the experimental protocol.  When researchers hear about quality control, they immediately shift their attention to those operating and maintaining the instrument, as if the whole weight of QC should fall on their shoulders.   It is true that core facilities work hard to provide high-quality instruments and monitor performance over time so that the researchers can enjoy uniformity in their experiments. That, however, is just one level of QC.  As the experimental…

Clinical trials are studies designed to test the novel methods of diagnosing and treating health conditions – by observing the outcomes of human subjects under experimental conditions.  These are interventional studies that are performed under stringent clinical laboratory settings. Contrariwise, non-interventional studies are performed outside the clinical trial settings that provide researchers an opportunity to monitor the effect of drugs in real-life situations. Non-interventional trials are also termed observational studies as they include post-marketing surveillance studies (PMS) and post-authorization safety studies (PASS). Clinical trials are preferred for testing newly developed drugs since interventional studies are conducted in a highly monitored…

As we continue to explore the steps involved in optimizing a flow cytometry experiment, we turn our attention to the detectors and optimizing sensitivity: instrument voltage optimization.  This is important as we want to ensure that we can make as sensitive a measurement as possible.  This requires us to know the optimal sensitivity of our instrument, and how our stained cells are resolved based on that voltage.  Let’s start by asking the question what makes a good voltage?  Joe Trotter, from the BD Biosciences Advanced Technology Group, once suggested the following:  Electronic noise effects resolution sensitivity   A good minimal PMT…