BD FACSAria Fusion

What is the BD FACSAria Fusion? 

The BD FACSAria Fusion uses conventional Flow Cytometry methods to find and separate individual cells in mixed samples at the single-cell level. This allows for sorting into specific homogeneous collections with high accuracy and purity. The BD FACSAria Fusion can sort between 1 and 4 unique cellular populations into collection tubes or well plates. The Aria Fusion system has been used to resolve various types of cell populations, including neuronal, vascular, splenic, endothelial, etc.

The FACSAria Fusion is set up inside a class II biosafety cabinet, permitting the handling of samples up to BSL-2 infectious materials and unfixed human samples. This setup is also suitable for aseptic sorting.

Characteristics 

• Laser lines – violet (405nm), blue (488nm), yellow-green (561nm), and red (640nm)
• 16 parameters – forward & side scatter and 14 fluorescence detectors
• Four-way sorting into tubes or single cell sorting directly into plates or slides
• BSC Class II biosafety cabinet for sorting BSL-2 biohazardous samples

Multiple fluorophore options

The Aria Fusion can analyze multiple colors, up to 14, using its four-laser system. To accurately identify and sort samples with the Aria Fusion, samples must be stained with fluorophores which correspond to the detector configuration shown below.

Please note that, although there are various fluorophore choices for a detector, only one fluorophore can be selected for one detector for an experiment. As an example, your sample may include both APC and FITC, because the signal from each corresponds to the Red 670/30 and Blue 530/30 longpass filters assigned to their respective detectors. However, you cannot use both APC and Alexa Fluor 647 in the same sample because they share the same detector and, as a result, cannot be differentiated on the Aria Fusion.

If you need to use fluors with similar emission spectra, please see information on the Cytek Aurora also housed in the facility. Please inform the Aria Fusion operator of your fluorochrome panel prior to the day of our experiment so that they may verify whether it fits within the 14-detector parameters.

Operation and policies

The BD FacsAria fusion can only be used by staff members of the Flow Core who have been properly trained and certified by BD Biosciences.

Flow Core is not responsible for maintaining cell viability prior to nor directly following cell sorting. It is the responsibility of individual laboratories to ensure that samples arrive in stable condition, and that their cells survive the return trip to individual laboratory spaces.The Flow Core's responsibility is only to keep the cells alive while they are being sorted in the Aria Fusion stream. To help keep cells alive, we highly recommend that labs use a special media in their tubes before and after sorting.

Data and storage

Flow Core does not take responsibility for the data collected using this instrument. It is up to each lab to look after their own experiment results. We suggest that you save your data onto something like a flash drive or an external hard drive after you complete your experiment. This way, you can make sure your data is safe and accessible when you need it.