Our Science – McKinnon Website
Katherine M. McKinnon
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Research
The Vaccine Branch FACS Core Facility provides expertise and support for biological research projects within the CCR by:
1) Maintaining and operating state-of-the-art flow cytometry instrumentation and support technology;
2) Providing training and application support for ongoing and future research studies within the CCR;
3) Coordinating the use of this core facility for maximum efficiency;
4) Developing new techniques and applications in flow cytometry; and
5) Providing expertise and assistance to investigators in experimental design using flow cytometry technology.
The FACS Core Facility provides the BL2/BL3 containment necessary to safely sort live cells infected with retroviruses, such as HIV/SIV, and other infectious agents known or suspected in blood and tissue samples. A multicolor cell sorter is available for standard and infectious sorting and we also have a 3-laser 12-color digital high-speed cell sorter equiped with containment for use as an infectious cell sorter. In addition, the facility offers five multicolor flow cytometers and a 4-laser high-end analyzer.
The FACS Core Facility supports more than 70 CCR investigators. In addition, we are currently working on a collaboration with an investigator from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Experiments typically involve multi-parameter single-cell analysis of cells from human, non-human primate and mouse primary sources. Additional analysis is also conducted on in vitro cultured cells. Reagents for these experiments include monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies with fluorescent labels and dyes that are used for staining a variety of cellular components.
Applications supported by the facility include:
- multi-color phenotypic analysis
- cell cycle analysis
- apoptosis analysis
- proliferation analysis with BrdU and CFSE
- intracellular cytokine analysis
- rare event analysis
- calcium flux analysis
The facility supports a variety of CCR projects, including immune monitoring for HIV, SIV, HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 vaccine studies on non-human primates, and monitoring the results of gene expression on cell proliferation and apoptosis.
This page was last updated on 2/27/2013.
