The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation has had an operating Flow Cytometry Core for more than thirty years. It has provided multiple investigators in the areas of Immunology, Cell Cycle, Cardiovascular Biology and Developmental Biology with access to the instrumentation required to analyze and isolate cells using flow cytometry.
The aim of the Flow Cytometry Core is to provide access to state-of-the-art flow cytometry to the Project Leaders in this CMRO COBRE. This includes not only access to the physical instruments required, but also advice on the possibilities and limitations of the technology and help designing and interpreting experiments that use these approaches. The projects in this COBRE will take advantage of some of the most common uses of this technology, such as phenotyping based upon the expression of one or more cell surface (or intracellular) molecules using fluorescently-labeled antibodies, and purification of these populations by sorting. In addition, they will use flow cytometry for the functional assessment of cells, including analysis of cell cycle, analysis of calcium signaling, and assessment of mitochondrial volume and health. Some of the more metabolism-focused assays such as Rhod2 to detect mitochondrial Ca+2 accumulation, determination of mitochondrial mass, and glucose uptake assays are not routinely done by our users, and their implementation will therefore broaden the expertise of the facility. This will help achieve the overall COBRE goal of expanding cellular metabolism research and expertise in Oklahoma. Use of flow cytometric approaches to analyze cellular metabolism changes is a fast-changing and relatively novel area, and the Core facility will evolve as necessary to provide our investigators with access to any new tools required to advance their research programs.
