Table 1.

Flow Cytometric Capabilities

Capability	Feature	Utility	Application
Analysis	Homogeneous detection	Real-time discrimination of particle bound and unbound molecules	Ligand Binding, Molecular assembly or binding interactions
	Multiparameter	10 or more colors and scatter signals	High Content, e.g, Phosphoprotein Signal Analysis
	Multiplexing and barcoding	2 or more colors and scatter signals	Suspension arrays for genotyping, detection of organisms and analytes
	Rate via digital signal processing	50,000 events per second	Thousands of flow cytometric assays
	Size Discrimination	Particles sizes ranging from submicron to 10’s of microns	Cells, particles, insoluble precipitate screening of compound libraries
Imaging	Multiparameter image capture for each cell or particle	1,000 events per second	Cell morphology and topography
Sample Handling	Bioreactor	Programmed flow	Process Control
	Multiwell	1–2 per minute	Commercially Integrated plate loaders
	Mutliwell	10 wells per minute	Macro samples segmented by air bubbles delivered continuously
	Multiwell	40–100 wells per minute	Micro Samples segmented by air bubbles delivered continuously
	Multiwell, real-time mixing	Gradient formation, 4 per minute	Cell response pharmacology
	Real-time Mixing	Second time resolution	Cell Response, Ligand Binding
		Subsecond time resolution	Ligand Binding
	On line shear	Cone and plate, parallel plate	Cell adhesion under shear
	On line shear	Syringe	Cell activation by shear
	On line shear	Couette	Cell adhesion and activation under shear
Sensitivity of Detection	Conventional	100’s of dye molecules	Full range of cytometric assays
		10’s of phycobiliproteins	Immunophenotypic assays
		10’s of nanoparticles
		Single molecule detection
Sorting cells and particles	High Speed Sorting	50,000 events per second	Each cell is an assay
	Large Particle	100–1000 events per second	One bead one compound screening; multicellular organism, large cell or cell cluster screening