Short Review of Flow Cytometry (FCM)

Short Review of Flow Cytometry

Abstract

Flow cytometry is a powerful lab technique, that quickly analyses physical and chemical features (such as size, shape, and internal complexity) of single cells as they flux in a fluid flood through lasers. Individual cells or particles suspended in a buffer are passed through one or more lasers. Two types of tests are performed on each cell/particle: visible light scattering and one or more fluorescence parameters. Both tests are run independently. Flow cytometry is a fundamental tool with many applications and has become essential in fields as diverse as immunology, cell biology, molecular biology, cancer research, and infectious disease surveillance (1).

Furthermore, it allows sorting out different populations of cells from a variety of tissues at a same given time for further analysis. The significant development in the flow cytometry   technique, since its initiation in the 1960s, has been a crucial component of modern clinical diagnostics and biomedical research.