Dear listmembers, We are going to purchase a flow cytometer with sorting capabilities for use in aquatic microbial ecology. Our main task is to measure bacteria from natural samples (DAPI, SYTO13, CY3,...). Unfortunately these organisms are very small (down to 0.2 microns) and they do not live in the water all by themselves - there will be lots of algae, flagellates, detritus etc. So we need to have good sorting capabilities to check what we are actually measuring in the microscope, but the big problem (I feel) is the instrument's sensitivity. I would like to ask experienced users out there: 1- Which features, do you think, are of particular importance to our application. (PMT for forward scatter is certainly one). Other important features? 2- What do you think of jet in air vs. cuvette sensing. Flat surfaces should enhance scatter measurement, but seemingly only Coulter is ready to provide a sorting(!) cuvette. Other important features? 3- We need three excitation wavelengths (UV, 488, 514 or higher) for various experiments, not all three at the same time but all possible combinations of two of them. This will involve a lot of laser adjustment. How complicated is it on different instruments e.g. to shift a laser beam from second to first sensing position? 4- I would highly appreciate hearing about any relevant experience on different instruments. What we have in mind is to bye one of the following (in alphabetic order): -Becton Dickinson FACS Vantage -Coulter Epics Elite ESP -Cytomation MoFlo MLS. Thanks for any hints Stefan ---------------------------------------------------- Stefan Andreatta University of Innsbruck, Austria Institute of Zoology and Limnology Technikerstrasse 25, A-6020 Innsbruck phone: +43-(0)512-507-6122 fax: +43-(0)512-507-2930
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