Cell sorters seem to vary wildly in price. There is
SonySH800S Flow Sorter for US$150K (AU$197K)
Biorad Se3 AU$250K
BD FACS Melody for AU$350K.
What are the pros & cons?
I'm interested in hearing from people with experience with these machines.
Hi Christine,
I do not have any experience with Sony flow sorter neither with Biorad but I am big fun of BD products :)... Actually, in our team we do not have a cell sorter but we are dependent on a cytometry platform there I constantly use FACSAria II/III for single cell sorting and I am quite happy with it! However, for practical reasons I did suggest to my boss to buy a cell sorter for our team. Since it is always a question of place in the lab, I was thinking that it could be good to have a FACSMelody...I attended a demo session of FACSMelody and here are some characteristics:
number of laser: 1-4
9 colours maximum so with SSC and FSC- 11 parameters in total
price: 140.000-240.000 euros (depends on the number of laser you would like to have, also the hood etc)
nozzle size: 100µm (for PBMCs it is better to use 70 µm but this does not exist for Melody)
sorting into tubes/slides/plates (6/24/48/96/384 wells)
program to analyze: NOT diva (BD created their on program for FACS Melody. different name but quite similar to DIVA and very simple to follow)
have index sorting option (it is an option to know by the analyzer from which population the sorted cell is coming from, you can track it by backgating!)
compensation to pass: every 60 days : )
and the time of preparation for the machine is ONLY in 17 minutes : )
Hope this could help you a bit!
Let us informed for your final version!
Cheers,
Ayrin
Hey Christine! Instrumentation really depends on what you want to accomplish experimentally. Are you just looking at GFP or do you need multicolor immunophentyping, core/individual lab as Aryin mentioned, etc. University of Chicago Flow has a good blog post on workflows when looking for instruments. These instruments have different strengths based on hardware/software. Sony uses a microfluidics sorting chip, Biorad S3e is jet-in-air and BD Melody is cuvette based. Number of lasers/fluorophores varies between them as do the software capabilities.
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