https://www.ibiology.org/techniques/facs

Dr. Steffen Schmitt explains the principles of FACS and describes the basic components of a droplet cell sorter. He gives advice on optimizing the yield, purity, recovery time, and viability of isolated cells.

FACS (fluorescence activated cell sorting) differs from conventional flow cytometry in that it allows for the physical separation, and subsequent collection, of single cells or cell populations. FACS is useful for applications such as establishing cell lines carrying a transgene, enriching for cells in a specific cell cycle phase, or studying the transcriptome or genome or proteome of a whole population on a single cell level. Dr. Steffen Schmitt explains the components and basic function of droplet-based cell sorters. He also provides strategies to optimize the key values in cell sorting (e.g. yield, purity, recovery time, and viability) depending on the downstream assay to be performed on the isolated cells.

Speaker Biography:
Dr. Steffen Schmitt studied biology at the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg and completed his PhD in the Department of Cellular Immunology at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). After a short post-doc, he established and led a flow cytometry core lab at the Natural Science and Medical Research Center (NMFZ) at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Since 2007, Schmitt has been head of the Flow Cytometry Unit of the Imaging and Cytometry Core Facility at the DKFZ in Heidelberg.