Science Hill Flow Cytometry Facility

The Yale Flow Cytometry Facility on Science Hill provides comprehensive services to support flow cytometric analysis and cell sorting (also known as FACS). These services include access to advanced instrumentation, expert technical assistance, user training, and consultation.

Flow cytometry is a powerful technique that enables simultaneous measurement and analysis of multiple physical and chemical characteristics of individual particles—typically cells—as they pass through a series of laser beams in a fluid stream at rates of thousands of particles per second. Properties assessed include cell size, internal complexity (granularity), and fluorescence intensity (across up to ~12 fluorescence channels for analysis of different proteins or fluorophores), which are detected using an optical-electronic system that captures how cells scatter light and emit fluorescence signals.

Particles or cells ranging from 0.5 to 150 micrometers in size can be analyzed, and single-cell suspensions of animal or plant tissues can be analyzed. In addition to analysis, the facility offers cell sorting (FACS) to isolate specific populations or individual cells for downstream applications including microscopy, biochemical assays, functional analyses, or cell line generation.