The ability to accurately analyze and isolate specific sub-populations of cells from complex mixtures, whether naturally-occurring or genetically engineered subpopulations, is crucial to a variety of research projects at the Penn State College of Medicine. While the services of the shared core facilities in the Section of Technology Development and Research Resources have a long and successful history, some of the original instrumentation with which our shared facilities were initiated is in dire need of replacement. This proposal requests funds to replace our obsolete 18 year-old EPICS V flow cytometer/sorter with a new Cytomation MoFlo instrument capable of doing the multi-color analyses and high-speed sorting necessary for the next stages of several ongoing research projects here. The upgrading of our flow cytometer/sorter instrumentation will enable us to re-initiate sorting services in our shared Core Facilities, which have not been available due to the limited capacities of our current sorter and its frequent downtime. This limitation has led our researchers to either go elsewhere for their cell sorting needs (a ninety mile drive to our State College campus), or to find alternate, less-than-optimal solutions to addressing their research aims. The requested instrument will perform the four color analysis, 3 and 4-color sorting, and the high speed sorting currently unavailable at our institution yet required by the major users group named in the proposal. The requested instrument will be used by numerous investigators, including the six who are included as the major users group in this proposal.
