Mass Cytometry combines elements from flow cytometry and inductively-coupled plasma mass spectroscopy. Also called CyTOF (for time-of-flight cytometry), this powerful technology enables massive multiparametric analysis of single cell suspensions to investigate cellular responses in heterogeneous populations. Cells are stained with 50 or more antibody probes that are each coupled to unique transition elements and lanthanides.
The presence and abundance of the metal tags on surface epitopes and intracellular markers of individual cells is used to understand cellular responses such as cytokine production, phosphoprotein signaling, or nuclear antigen expression in complex and heterogeneous cell populations.
Core Service Offerings
The facility is open to all UNC clinical and scientific researchers as well as to external universities and commercial researchers.
Our expanded list of services includes:
- Mass cytometry panel design
- Conjugation of antibodies to metal isotopes
- Mass cytometry sample staining
- Mass cytometry data acquisition
- RNA Extraction
- Illumina Stranded mRNA prep
- T Cell Receptor 5’ RACE Amplicon Library Prep
- 10X Genomics Single Cell Library Preps of 5′ Transcriptome and Receptor V(D)J