NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Fluidigm and BD Biosciences today announced they will co-host a series of public seminars on the isolation and analysis of single cells using a combination of their technologies.
The seminars will discuss the experimental workflows of the companies' technologies and showcase cell isolation using the BD FacsAria III Cell Sorter and analysis on the Fluidigm BioMark HD System.
In a statement, Fluidigm said that "the combination of both the cell surface phenotype obtained from cell sorting and the gene expression profiles of individual cells isolated from a heterogeneous population of cells provides a deeper view into cellular systems."
Gajus Worthington, president and CEO of Fluidigm, added, "We believe this emerging field of single-cell genomics research will help elucidate the underlying biomolecular processes across many diverse biomedical research areas."
BD cell sorting systems allows researchers to isolate single cells from thousands of cells using up to 18 surface markers, Fluidigm said. Using the Fluidigm platform to assay for differential expression levels allows for the assessment of cellular heterogeneity and the cellular biomolecular processes.
"We believe that joining our expertise in cell sorting with Fluidigm's ability to provide real-time polymerase chain reaction gene expression profiles of hundreds of genes from multiple minute samples will greatly simplify and advance single-cell research," said James Glasscock, president of BD Biosciences, a segment of Becton Dickinson.
Seminars are planned for the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Boston, Houston, and Montreal. Locations also include a number of private institutions in North America.