ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a basic understanding of how flow cytometers work, and discusses some of the important considerations when doing an experiment. It illustrates some applications of flow cytometry in the study of normal and abnormal development. The chapter presents detailed experimental procedures for some commonly used techniques and offers a list of suggested references for those in search of additional information. Although all flow cytometers are similar in principle, they range in complexity from easy-to-operate, but inflexible, clinical units to complex research units that can be reconfigured for a wide variety of applications. The greatest restriction for flow cytometric analysis is the need for a single-cell suspension, which not only sacrifices information about treatment-related alterations of tissue architecture, but for many solid tissues becomes technically problematic as one must optimize yield to ensure sample representivity. Flow cytometry offers a variety of capabilities for investigating the cellular and subcellular mechanisms that underlie both normal and abnormal development.
