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Equipment for cell-based techniques

Equipment for cell-based techniques

Binder CB150 and Memmert INCO 2 153 incubators

Depending on the cell culture of interest, we have two incubator systems available. The Binder CB150 CO2-incubator enables the cultivation of a whole range of cell lines and guarantees the optimal conditions for cell growth. The Memmert INCO 2 153 incubator also includes O2-regulation, an invaluable asset for good hESC culturing.

PALM Zeiss UV

ProGenTomics has a PALM Zeiss UV laser capture microdissection platform at its disposal. This system consists of an inverted high-quality Axiovert 200 microscope, also to be used as a regular research microscope, with the accompanying PALM RoboSoftware. It also includes an ApoTome to make optical sections of your fluorescent samples, as such creating even better images.

This platform allows to specifically isolate the required piece of tissue, individual cells or even subcellular components, without contact and thus without the risk of contamination. The cells of interest can be visualized with both light microscopy and fluorescence microscopy. For the latter, four color channels are available:

  • DAPI (ex. G 365 /em. BP 445-50)
  • FITC (ex. BP 470-40 / em. BP 525-50)
  • AF555 (ex. BP 546-12 / em. BP 575-640)
  • SpectrumAqua (ex. BP 436-20 / em. BP 480-40)

By means of the focused UV laser beam, your selected specimen can be isolated very fast, into the lid of an Eppendorf tube, containing the appropriate buffer for subsequent DNA or RNA analysis. During sample collection, the laser pulse affects the cells of interest only for about 1 nanosecond. Also, the heat transfer to adjacent cells is negligible, thus enabling rather gentle isolation.

FC500 flow cytometer

The FC500 flow cytometer can provide a quick analysis of your cells of interest. The forward scatter and side scatter detectors respectively deliver information on the size and morphological complexity of the measured cells. This system picks up 0.5 µm particles from the background noise, up to the maximum detection of 40 µm-sized particles. The two lasers (Argon laser 488 nm and Red solid-state diode 635 nm) enable visualization by means of a whole range of different fluorophores, whether or not in multiplex. Detectors for the following fluorophores are available:

  • FL1: Fluorescein (FITC, GFP, eGFP)
  • FL2: Phycoerythrin (PE)
  • FL3: PE-Texas Red (ECD), Propidium iodide
  • FL4: PE-Cyanin 5 (PE-Cy5), Allophycocyanin (APC)
  • FL5: PE-Cyanin 7 (PE-Cy7)

Samples can be run in single tube mode or in a 32-tube carousel. The FC500 allows high-throughput data acquisition with a maximum acquisition rate of 3300 events/sec, after which the results are analyzed with the accompanying CXP software.