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Multicolor Flow Cytometry

 

For Professionals in Research

Overview
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Multicolor Flow Cytometry Tools
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BD Horizon Brilliant™ Polymer Dyes
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BD Horizon Brilliant™ Dyes

BD Horizon Brilliant™ Dyes were developed from pioneering polymer dye technology acquired from Sirigen Ltd. These unique dyes can be brighter than conventional dyes, with equivalent background—a breakthrough in the field.

 

For cells that have few receptors on the surface, bright reagents are essential in resolving these dim cells from others in a sample. The characteristics of the BD Horizon Brilliant™ Polymer Dyes enable them to achieve, in some cases, much brighter fluorescence signals than traditional organic fluorescent dyes or even phycobiliproteins such as PE or APC. This means that they are effective for identifying cell populations with a broader range of receptor density than previously possible.

 

 

Signal Amplification

BD Horizon Brilliant™ Dye polymer chains can be considered as a collection of optical segments. Each segment in the polymer chain is capable of absorbing light, resulting in materials that can have extremely large extinction coefficients (or probability of absorbing photons of light).

 

As a result of the electronic delocalization inherent to these materials, energy has the ability to move or migrate along these extended chains. Thus, all the light harvested by the polymers can either be channeled to a closely associated fluorescent acceptor of lower energy through a fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) process, or emitted as fluorescence by the polymer itself if no dyes are used. It is this collective molecular antenna–like behavior that forms the foundation of the technology and intellectual property base.

Conjugated to a reporter dye, these polymers can also serve as donors to create tandem dyes with exceptional Stokes shifts.

Base Polymer Dyes and Polymer Tandem Dyes

BD Horizon Brilliant™ Dyes come in two basic formats—base polymer dyes and polymer tandem dyes.
 

The base polymer dyes are the simplest embodiment of the technology, are very photostable and are bright compared to conventional fluorescent dyes. They are very effective at collecting excitation light (like molecular antennae) and efficiently converting it to emitted light at a longer wavelength.

 

Polymer tandem dyes are composed of two dye molecules—the base polymer (donor) dye and a second conventional fluorescent (acceptor) dye. The molecules are chemically linked together to form a tandem dye that is excited at the excitation wavelength of the donor and emits at the emission wavelength of the acceptor. These tandem dyes are very bright compared to conventional tandem dyes.
 

One of the future goals for this technology is to design base polymer dyes and polymer tandem dyes that can be easily multiplexed to make multicolor flow cytometry easier.

 

View sample data from our newest BD Horizon Brilliant™ Dyes.

For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.

Alexa Fluor and Pacific Blue are trademarks of Life Technologies Corporation. 

Cy is a trademark of Global Life Sciences Solutions Germany GmbH or an affiliate doing business as Cytiva.

Refer to manufacturer's instructions for use and related User Manuals and Technical Data Sheets before using this product as described.

Comparisons, where applicable, are made against older BD technology, manual methods or are general performance claims. Comparisons are not made against non-BD technologies, unless otherwise noted.