Flow Cytometry

The most important technique for the analytical lab is currently flow cytometry (FCM). The most common use of flow cytometry in our lab is for determination of the DNA amount, ploidy level of a plant, to determine aneuploidy, or to detect interspecific hybrids. These assays can be done on leaf tissue, but also directly on the seed.

Flow cytometry is a technique where individual particles are passing in a flow along a measuring point where the particles are illuminated and the scattered light and fluorescence are measured. From a small amount of tissue (leaf or directly from seed) nuclei are isolated. These nuclei are stained with a DNA dye. The flow cytometer analyses the fluorescence intensity per nucleus, which is a measure for the DNA content.