Our Role & Impact

Broad research use of equipment: The Invitrogen Countess II FL is an Automated Cell Counter with a reusable slide and fluorescence capabilities that can accurately count cells, monitor fluorescent protein expression, and measure cell viability with applications to both basic and clinical research projects requiring cell quantification.

It is suitable for the quantification of both model and human cells. The reusable slide makes it highly affordable by significantly reducing consumable costs, which is ideal for EMCRs. The accuracy of the Countess II FL eliminates the subjectivity of manual cell counting and minimizes user-to-user variability enabling highly reproducible results. It also eliminates the need for manual microscope time for cell counting, which has implications for staff and student health and safety by reducing fatigue and exposure to lasers. The speed of the Countess II FL allows quantification of both live and dead cells for determining cell viability as well average cell size in as little as 10 seconds, which will significantly increase throughput and productivity. The fluorescent cubes are interchangeable and can be customized to suit individual user needs. We will purchase the two mainstay fluorescent channels (e.g. green and red fluorescent protein) with this grant, but additional cubes may be purchased by individual users/teams as required. These fluorescent capabilities will have broad experimental implications that are cost effective and assist in reducing the burden on the HMRI Core Flow Cytometry facility for some applications.