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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1979 Nov;76(11):5728–5730. doi: 10.1073/pnas.76.11.5728

Estimation of membrane potentials of individual lymphocytes by flow cytometry.

H M Shapiro, P J Natale, L A Kamentsky
PMCID: PMC411723  PMID: 93281

Abstract

The membrane potentials of individual cells can be estimated by flow cytometric quantitation of the cells' uptake of the fluorescent lipophilic cationic dye 3,3'-dihexyloxacarbocyanine iodide. Human lymphocytes separated from peripheral blood on Hypaque-Ficoll gradients are uniformly depolarized by gramicidin and hyperpolarized by valinomycin. Concanavalin A and phytohemagglutinin depolarize only a fraction of the lymphocytes. The flow cytometric technique allows precise detection of heterogeneous membrane potential responses to stimuli such as lectins; it could also provide a basis for sorting cells that respond differently to a given stimulus.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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