The French Association of Cytometry (AFC) had initiated a particularly important program of one-day workshops, each one dedicated to a specific question regarding the cytomery practice. One of these workshops per year was free of charges for our members and was especially organised as a Prestige day. This year we have planned to talk about the fluorescence compensation settings in flow cytometry. Because of the increased number of fluorochromes and reagents available and to the greater sophistication of the instruments, the applications in clinical practice are becoming more and more numerous. They are mainly multicolor analysis (four to six and even nine colors) to detect rare events such as minimal residual disease (MRD) or scarce cells populations in biological samples. These applications are much more complex and need special attention from the scientist to avoid misinterpretation of the data observed. One of the main problems is the spectral overlap observed between the different fluorochromes used in combination that has to be corrected by more and more complex mathematic compensation settings. These settings are not always so easy, and strict procedures are needed to get the most reliable data. Different speakers were invited to make a review on fluorescence phenomena, to present the compensation settings procedure and the few observed confunding situations to be aware of. A summary of their presentations was made here.This theme was particurlarly appropriate to make a special tribute to our late lamented past President, Jean Luc D'Hautcourt, who passionately contributed to improve wide and good practice in flow cytometry (1,2). This special 2006 Prestige workshop was dedicated to his memory.
FLUORESCENCE AND FLUOROCHROMESFluorescence is the property of molecules which are able to absorb the energy of light in a range of specific wavelength (excitation), and almost instantaneously to reemit the absorbed energy as a light with a weaker energy, that means a higher wavelength (emission). The use of such molecules in the field of biological research has been a real revolution, by giving access to molecular information at the cellular or sub cellular level with a very high sensitivity. At biologists disposal are different type of fluorescent probes, and regularly new probes or ways of using them are developed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.