6-laser high specification spectral flow cytometer analyzer (Sony ID7000)

身体由数十亿个细胞组成，这些细胞具有许多不同的功能，这取决于它们组成的器官或它们所在的身体组织。细胞在其生命周期中也可能发生变化，例如免疫细胞对感染或细胞突变的反应可能导致癌症。为了能够识别细胞的差异和变化，我们需要像荧光激活细胞分析仪这样的敏感机器。这些科学仪器将光照射到已经用抗体标记的细胞上，如果它们被点亮，就会发光。如果细胞发光，则表明细胞上存在特定蛋白质。许多颜色可用于检测多种蛋白质，从而给出“单细胞特征”。我们的研究将探讨这些特征如何用于预测疾病，例如异常胚胎，免疫系统的变化，炎症，癌症。

The body is composed of billions of cells which have many different functions depending on the organs which they make up or the body tissues in which they reside. Cells may also change during their lifetime e.g. immune cells responding to infections or mutations in cells may lead to cancer. To be able to identify differences and changes in cells we need sensitive machines like fluorescence activated cell analysers. These scientific instruments shine light onto cells which have been labelled with antibodies that glow if they are lit up. If the cell glows then it indicates the presence of a specific protein on the cell. Many colours can be used to detect a multitude of proteins thereby giving a "single cell signature". Our research will investigate how these signatures can be used to predict diseases e.g. abnormal embryos, changes in the immune system, inflammation, cancer.