Join The Revolution With Easy, Effective Cell Separation

Technology has freed us from the drudgery of many tasks. In the research world, that includes the new techniques that separate cells without sweat or slog. Whether your country’s day of independence falls on July 4th or 14th, or on any other day in the year, it’s time to exercise your freedom with cell separation products that don’t tax your patience or time.

Of course, sticking with traditional techniques is a great way to expand your capacity for endurance and tolerance. Such efforts to build character involve non-specific strategies that play on the physical parameters of different cell types. Centrifuges, with the help of specialized reagents, separate cells based upon their varying densities. Red blood cells separate from white blood cells; granulocytes separate from leukocytes. Density centrifugation is often among the early steps of processing blood samples. But after that, such crude separations won’t get you far with today’s emphasis on molecular biology.

Most modern separation technologies hinge upon antibodies that recognize specific cells by their extracellular markers. Antibodies attached to solid substrates, such as resin beads, can bind to target cells, which can then be isolated. Chromatography columns, filled with antibody-tethered beads, are one option; however, most researchers have come to embrace flow cytometers, which have proven efficient and reliable. These much-heralded instruments, appended with separation capacity, were at first limited to separating cells by one type of molecular marker. That left researchers running multiple separations to isolate specialized populations differentiated by a set of several markers. Now, flow cytometers can simultaneously detect and segregate up to 18 extracellular markers.

Flow cytometers, also referred to as fluorescence activated cell-sorters (FACS), have become useful in recombinant DNA efforts as well. Through genetic engineering, researchers can produce proteins that are attached to an inert fluorescent protein, which allows the flow cytometer to detect the protein-containing cell. The technique greatly enhances the power to isolate highly specialized cells, in addition to screening for large DNA libraries, according to a paper published in the March 2005 issue of Nucleic Acids Research.

Magnetic beads, which also offer this type of multiplexing, have become overwhelmingly popular. Antibody-tethered nano-sized paramagnetic beads are incubated with the cell sample. Then, the target cells segregate from the rest of the sample by a magnet that attracts the beads. Or, you can use magnetic beads to rid your sample of unwanted cells. In this case, consider centrifugation, which can be stressful for fragile cells. Following incubation with non-magnetic beads, centrifugation segregates the cells into the pellet at the bottom of the tube.

Take a look at the list below to review some of the ingeniously designed products available. From kits to instruments, they’re all geared toward helping you perform a more perfect separation.