Application of the CYTOMIC 12 flow cytometric compact analyzer for automatic kinetic measurements.

Flow cytometry, usually applied to cells which have time independent features, can also be used for kinetic experiments where the change of cell populations with time is investigated. Dedicated time sequencing programs written in Assembler and incorporated in the CYTOMIC 12 analyzer (4) are described. A sequence of 64 one parameter histograms can be automatically acquired and immediately displayed as a pseudo-two-parameter histogram. The acquisition time for each of the subsequent histograms can be selected between 1 and 32 seconds. Kinetics lasting up to 34 minutes are resolved into 64 time intervals. Two parameter kinetics can be resolved into 12 32 X 32 channel, two parameter histograms which are displayed and evaluated immediately on the analyzer screen in groups of 4 without using complicated list mode procedures. The standard CYTOMIC 12 software can be applied for processing and printing of the sequence distribution curves.