MoFlo Upgraded to XDP, plus a couple new laser lines.

Ah, the MoFlo - what a fine piece of craftsmanship!  I started my relationship with the MoFlo (Formerly of Cytomation, Formerly of DakoCytomation, Formerly of Dako, Currently of Beckman-Coulter) in the year 2000.  We had many great years together, but our relationship was getting a bit stale.  You see, there was this fancy new gal in town call the Aria who lured me into her web of seduction with promises of 'turn-key' operation, and I bit!  I soon realized however, that the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side, and re-visited the rock-solid usability of the MoFlo.  In recent years, the MoFlo started showing its age.  I have to admit, part of the issue was a certain level of neglect and abuse on our part, but hey 10 years in instrument years is like 80 in people years.  And so we came to a fork in the road, and as with most things in the technology area utilizing 20 year old components, we had to decide, pull the plug or pursue the upgrade path.
When I was contacted by the folks at Propel labs (who, evidently are a group of people from the original Cytomation company) that there was an upgrade path to the XDP electronics for the legacy MoFlo, I was thrilled.  After about a year of begging for money from anyone that would listen to me, I finally secured the funding and was ready for the upgrade.  So, why upgrade to XDP instead of buying a new sorter?  Well, first of all, it was a financial thing.  The cost of an upgrade is about 1/4th the cost of a new sorter.  Secondly, the fluidics on our MoFlo are uncannily stable; who knows if we'd strike it rich again with a new sorter.  You may also be asking, what's so great about XDP?  Well, I'd never be able to explain with such elegance as Dan Fox could, so all I can say is track down the white paper Dan wrote, read it, then pick your lower jaw up off the floor.  The big lure for me (besides the obsolescence of parts for the legacy MoFlo) was just the fact that we'd be able to operate with no/low hard aborts similar to the Aria, which, when paired with the higher number of droplets a jet-in-air can achieve, should allow us to sort faster and maintain high yields and purity. With our XDP upgrade, we also had all our PMTs changed, and threw on two new laser lines to boot.  - Side note - We had one of these co-lase towers installed on our MoFlo, which is also a product of Propel Labs, that basically combines two laser lines so they can be run colinear into the 3-pinhold MoFlo setup.  We chose to put on a UV and Red laser and run them colinear through the co-lase tower.  This now gives us a 4-laser MoFlo (355, 488, 561, and 640) - End Side Note -

The remains of the MoFlo after the tear-down

As far as the actual upgrade goes, the install went pretty smooth.  It took 2-3 guys about 3 days to completely tear down the instrument to basically an empty table, and then install the PMTs, electronics, the touch-screen panel, and the computer.  As with most installs/upgrades, we did have a couple hiccups, but they were taken care of immediately.  I guess that's one good thing about working with a smaller company like Propel Labs.  They can't afford to lose any business, so customer service is automatically very good.

We've been using the XDP now for about a week, and things have gone pretty well.  We're still getting use to the touch-screen interface, and some of the new things in Summit, but overall, I'd say we made the right decision, and hopefully the MoFlo can dutifully give us another 10 years of service.

Once we've gotten into a rhythm on this thing and really test the bounds of speed, I'll post some data.  But for now, enjoy a pic of the finished product below.

The upgraded MoFlo XDP in all its polished glory!

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The flow lab created its very own group on Facebook where you'll find the latest news about us, information on our instruments and discussions on the up-to-date events in the fantastic world of flow.

Find the University of Chicago Flow Cytometry Core Facility group  and feel free to leave any comments and questions you might have.

GLIIFCA Core Manager Meeting Preview - September 24, 2010

For those who will be at the meeting, I've put up my slides in PDF format here (sorry, I think the link works now) in case you wanted to follow-up with one of the tools we use in the core.  For those who will not be able to attend, feel free to read through to see what types of tools we use at UCFlow to try to do more with less and be as efficient as possible.  Check back here for updates from the Core Manager meeting and the rest of this year's GLIIFCA.

Flow cytometry leads to everything!

The man on the right in this picture is Jeff Schneider.  He used to be a technician here in the flow lab.  Look at him now, playing with his band Darling at the Hideout tonight at 9PM.  Rock on dude!

Flow cytometry leads to everything.

You know what really grinds my gears?

So, I was fixing a clogged DCM pump on the LSRII this morning, which requires the removal of the side panel on the instrument, getting on your hands and knees and digging around in the inner bowels of the beast.  As I was shimmying around, contorting my limbs in all sorts of god-awful positions, I kept crunching pieces of plastic under my feet.  I peaked down, backwards, over my shoulder to see a bunch of pipette tips on the floor...surrounding the trash bin at the foot of the instrument. Are you kidding me?  People, presumedly adding their PI or DAPI at the instrument, are ejecting their used tips in the vicinity of the garbage, and missing >50% of the time.  They obviously can hear the tips crashing into the ground and missing the garbage, but decide to do nothing about this?  I then pan across the room, and I see racks of nearly empty tubes, crumpled kimwipes and a full waste tank.  C'mon people, have a little respect, pick up after yourselves.   Needless to say, my DCM repair turned into a full-on cleaning session; swept, threw out all the tubes, wiped down the bench space, and even got the mop from the janitor's closet and mopped the floors.  So, here we go people, August 27th, 2010 at 10AM, the LSRII area in 037 is clean.  LET'S KEEP IT THAT WAY!

It's GLIIFCA Time!

We're in the dog days of Summer, so that could only mean one thing... GLIIFCA 19 is right around the corner.  The Great Lakes International (because we let the Canadians join us) Imaging and Flow Cytometry Association's 19th annual meeting will be held September 24 - 26, 2010 in Detroit, MI.  This is a great meeting for users of Flow Cytometry and Imaging technologies (including the ImageStream!) that gives you a chance to see how people are using Flow in interesting and novel ways in their research.  It's also ridiculously cheap.  The registration fee is a paltry $80 AND, if you bring a poster, you'll get a $100 travel stipend.  Also, it's close enough to drive,  and the hotel rates are very reasonable as well.  So, there's really no excuse not to go.  However, if you need one more reason why you should go to GLIIFCA this year, it's because the theme for this year's Saturday night party is freaking STAR WARS!!!!   So, click on over to GLIIFCA.org and register yourself today.  If you U of C folks do decide to join us, David will buy you a beer!

Got Sand?

Or should I say, do you need sand, because I have some, well, a bunch of sand in my office!  It has sort of turned into a UCFlow tradition now, but the office pranksters have done it again.  I'm not sure why I was surprised since this happens pretty much every July to me, but I have to admit... they got me good this time.  If you have no clue what I'm talking about let me explain.  Every time I leave the lab for an extended period of time (vacation, meetings, etc...) I come back to find my office 'decorated' with the latest musings of lead prankster, David Leclerc.  Now, these aren't just, "let's put a whoopee cushion on his chair" types of pranks, these take coordination and time, lots of time (I'm sure it all takes place after 5PM ; ).
In prior years, I've come back to find my office wallpapered with post-its, which sounds sort of crazy, but add to that, the fact that every single post-it had a little nonsensical note written on it.  Next was balloons.  My office was filled to about waist height with balloons - luckily they were filled with air, and not water or other types of noxiousness. The next year was aluminum foil.  My office and everything in it was wrapped in foil.  This was pretty extreme in that even the few pennies I had sitting on my shelf were individually wrapped in foil.  Which brings me to this year's vandalism.  As I approached my office on Monday morning, I started to notice a bit of graininess on the floor, still puzzled, I opened my door to find a "tropical paradise."  There was about 3 inches of sand covering the entire floor, a "palm" tree, empty bottles of corona, sand toys, and even a sand sculpture of the Eiffel Tower.
So, I haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to clean this up.  Luckily they were smart enough to put a plastic tarp over my carpet, so that should help.  But, seriously, if you are putting down some patio pavers this summer and need some sand, let me know!