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NATURE|Vol 441|29 June 2006TECHNOLOGY FEATURE CELL SORTINGDivide and conquerA key element of performing good cell-biology experiments is starting with exactly the right cells.
Michael Eisenstein takes a look at the technologies that can make this possible.What do you get when you cross an ink-jet
printer with a Coulter counter? Its not a riddle;
scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in
New Mexico asked the question 40 years ago,
and the answer turned out to be the cell sorter. Los Alamos researcher Mack Fulwyler created a prototype in 1965, which used vibration
to generate tiny droplets from a jet of solution
containing red blood cells; the individual cells
in each droplet could then be subjected to rapid
volumetric analysis and sorting. Fulwylers
prototype came to the attention of Stanford
University researcher Leonard Herzenberg.
I was working on immunofluorescence in
immunology and genetics, he says, and had
realized that there was a need for the means
to sort cells according to the molecules they
display on their surface.Herzenberg and his colleagues adapted
Fulwylers design to produce an instrument
that could sort cells depending on the presence
or absence of molecules identified by fluorescent labels the first...