Cell Cycle Imaging Services

Cell Cycle Imaging Services

The cell cycle is a series of events that occur during a cell grows and divides. The cell cycle consists of two specific and distinct phases: the interphase, which consists of G1 (gap 1), S (synthesis) and G2 (gap 2), and the mitotic phase; M (mitosis). When the cell cycle is out of control, a series of diseases may occur including cancer, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Researchers use cell cycle analysis to study cell cycle disorders, which is an important part of new drug discovery and is of great significance to cancer and regenerative medicine research.

The cell cycle.Figure 1. The cell cycle.

Cell Cycle Imaging Analysis

For a long time, flow cytometry has been the gold standard for detecting the cell cycle. It can quickly and accurately detect the percentage of cells in different stages of the cell cycle. But this method cannot provide the previous positional relationship and more information of the cells. Therefore, CD BioSciences combines the two technologies of fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry, and uses imaging flow cytometry to provide you with a high-quality one-stop service for cell cycle analysis. This method can not only measure the fluorescence intensity, but also can measure the bright-field and dark-field images of each cell in the population.

Cell Cycle Imaging Analysis Workflow

We use imaging flow cytometry technology to analyze the cell cycle, and the detailed analysis steps are as follows:

Apoptosis Assays Workflow

lmaging flow cytometry

The brightfield and darkfield images of the cells are measured by an imaging flow cytometer. The brightfield and darkfield images depict the light transmitted through the cell and light scattered from the cells within a cone centered at a 90° angle, respectively.

Preprocessing of raw images

The images are preprocessed, where we reshape the images to have their sizes coincide and tile them to montages of 15 × 15 images.

Segmentation and feature extraction

The montages are loaded into the image analysis software that we use to segment the cells’ brightfield images and to extract morphological features from the images.

Image analysis: classification

We need an annotated set of cells where the actual cell state is known to train the classifier and to test its predictive power. Once the classifier is trained it is used to predict the state of unlabelled cells and to digitally sort the cells into bins.

Materials

The experimental materials used in the cell cycle analysis process include glutamine, 10% FBS, 1% penicillin/streptomycin, 2-Mercaptoethanol, propidium iodide, mitotic protein monoclonal #2 antibody, DRAQ5 (a live-cell DNA stain), 96-well black, image flow cytometer, automated imaging and analysis software, other materials.

Our Advantages

  • Avoids the potentially confusing side effects of live cell labeling
  • Free up the remaining available fluorescence channels of the imaging flow cytometer
  • Easily sort cells according to the stage of the cell cycle
  • Experienced scientists provide experimental consultation
  • Reduced workload and cost

CD BioSciences has a professional team and advanced imaging equipment. The entire process of cell cycle imaging analysis is operated by experienced technicians to ensure the accuracy of the experiment. If you have a need for cell cycle imaging analysis, please feel free to contact us.

Reference
  1. Blasi, Thomas, et al. "Label-free cell cycle analysis for high-throughput imaging flow cytometry." Nature communications 7.1 (2016): 1-9.

*If your organization requires the signing of a confidentiality agreement, please contact us by email.

Please note: Our services can only be used for research purposes. Do not use in diagnostic or therapeutic procedures!

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