Re: Isolation of chloroplasts and Cellquest question

From: Nigel Blackhall (Nigel.Blackhall@nottingham.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jan 25 2000 - 09:22:20 EST


Dear all,

Carol Oxford raised a query concerning sorting chloroplasts.

What you need to remember is that chloroplasts contain the 
natural fluorochrome chlorophyll and its 'friends'.

I would therefore recommend setting your laser to 457 nm 
excitation (if its an argon ion) and remember to change the 90° 
scatter filter.

As Carol pointed out, emissions can be expected at the far red end 
of the spectrum, giving a much larger Stokes shift than usually 
encountered.

I have not looked at separating these two populations myself, but I 
would expect a dichroic filter at 45° with a cut-off in the 700-710 
range would do the job.  I would expect to see two populations on a 
plot of scatter vs fluorescence (either <710 nm or >710).  
Alternatively plot forward vs 90° scatter and <710 vs >710nm.  In all 
cases use a fluorescence signal rather than a scatter signal for 
triggering to discriminate against debris, mitochondria etc etc.

Hope this helps, look forward to hearing of your progress, reading 
the paper, meeting you at the Nobel prize event etc, etc.

Regards


Nigel Blackhall,
Experimental Officer, Plant Science Division,
School of Biological Sciences, University of Nottingham,
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
Tel +44 115 9515151 ext 18501
Fax +44 115 9513298



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