CFSE Population Identification in a Mixed Cell Population (blood) using Flow Cytometry

From: Christopher Rose (Christopher.Rose@cdha.nshealth.ca)
Date: Sun Dec 01 2002 - 14:45:38 EST


Hello,

I am trying developing a culture system using human platelet rich plasma and rat
osteoprogenitor cells.  I am forming clots out of the PRP and then adding the rat bone
marrow cells.  I am interested in the response of the rat bone marrow cells and bone
development.  As you can imagine there are many different cells types in the culture
(rat BM cells, human platelets, leukocytes, red blood cells, etc).  I have labelled
the rat cells with CFSE (molecular probes) prior to introduction to the PRP clots,
and I'm having some difficulty with performing the flow cytometry (FACSCalibur).
The dot plots that are produced are all over the place because of the different sizes
of all the cells present and also rat osteoblasts fall in the size range of human
leukocytes. The peaks on the histogram are also not well defined.

I was hoping that someone maybe able to provide me with some insight into settings
and tips when using flow with CFSE.  As you may well imagine I am dealing with a lot
of auto-fluorescence from the red cells.  The settings that I am using are:

Detector Voltage  AmpGain  Mode
FSC	   E-1	   7.00    Lin
SSC	   377	   1.00    Lin
FL1	   551	   1.00    Log

I have not fixed any of the samples before reading on the flow cytometer, as it may
cause higher auto-fluorescence.

I would appreciate any insight or tips anyone might have regarding examining only a
CFSE labelled population in a mixed culture using flow cytometry.

Thank You,


Chris Rose BSc, CTBS, MASc (c)
School of Biomedical Engineering
Dalhousie University



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 05 2003 - 19:26:30 EST