PI is good, but use it wisely.

From: Maciej Simm (simmmmer@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Feb 09 2001 - 08:14:08 EST


We recently concluded a 2 year long study where one of the parameters
measured was the oxidative burst of neutrophils/monocytes, assayed by
conversion of rhodamine to its fluorescent form.

There were two problems - nucleated RBC's and cell death in
activation with PMA. The problems were so bad, we couldn't set a gate
on even the neutrophils, because they were "engulphed" in the "RBC
scatter cloud ".

The kit for oxidative burst detection includes PI and we added it
every time. However in my ignorance of the instructions, I didn't
realize that the histogram showing how to set the PI signal on FL3
came from a program which could set an acquisition gate based on a
histogram. DOH!

So I acquired it right, but stored it wrong - should have raised the
threshold for FL3.

When analysing in cellquest, I saw the bad purity and reported
"specimen errors" for over half the samples in the study... But
fortunately I cought on to my mistake a few weeks ago, put everything
in FlowJo and re-analysed it based on the FL-3 bright PI+++ cells
only (in this setup the cells of interest would be the bright ones).

Turns out that all those "specimen error"'s are fine now.

I guess the lesson here is "read the kit instructions _before_ the
study begins, Maciej!"

:o)



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|    Maciej S. Simm      | 525 E 68th Street  |
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