In its ongoing efforts to stay at the forefront of cutting-edge laboratory technology, the Hampden-Sydney College Biology Department recently acquired a BD Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer, the leading model in the recent wave of “personalized” benchtop flow cytometers.  Although the cost and space required to operate flow cytometers once limited their use to large research intensive universities with core facilities dedicated solely to their operation, the emergence of benchtop cytometers has revolutionized this field and made this technology a reality for undergraduate education.  The Accuri C6 Cytometer has a plethora of applications in a variety of fields in the biological sciences.  It has the ability to measure up to 6 parameters on a single cell, and a population of millions of cells can be analyzed at the single-cell level in a matter of minutes.  Applications include phenotyping of both cell surface and intracellular molecules, assaying cell viability, cytotoxicity, and proliferation, analyzing cell cycle progression and DNA content, quantifying total/subsets of cells in a population, and monitoring intracellular calcium levels in response to different stimuli, just to name a few!  This instrument will be utilized by H-SC students in a number of laboratory courses offered by the Department, and it will also be used by both students and faculty conducting independent and collaborative research projects, contributing greatly to the diversity and depth of these studies!  We are so excited to have this new technology, and we are anxious to begin our flow cytometric studies at H-SC!!!

The Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer, it is a thing of beauty!