"Jeff Wang makes excellent beads for the following purpose. His RFP-30-5A product is a single bead that has fluorochromes that excite in UV and fluoresce into violet to blue (ca. 430 to 490 nm); they also excite at 488 and fluoresce from the green to the red (530 to 680 nm). We use them for instrument alignment when doing 5 color. The intensity of this single bead is typical of many labeled cells.

There is also a mix of beads (RCP-30-5) that is comprised of 6 populations with vary amounts of the fluorochromes. This provides a blank and 5 labeled beads that span the entire histogram for green to red emissions, and about half the histogram for blue and violet. The forward scatter CV's are about 1.5% and linear green fluorescences are mostly below 2% as I recall. Particle stability is excellent: at least 3 years would be a good guess if refrigerated." WebMaster's Note: We have data for 3.5 years stability now. We will continue to monitor the stability of RCP-30-5 on the yearly basis.
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" ---- please consider this an order for one vial of the RCP-30-5 Rainbow Calibration Particles. I intend to make use of these particles for tracking performance and stability of our two cytometers, a FACScan and an Ortho CytoronAbsolute. Your particles seem to have features that make them superior to competitive products, the prime one for my benefit being their ability to fluoresce with equally sharp peaks in all channels of cytometer. I will keep you informed as to the fulfillment of this aim.---"
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"The beads are very nice, and they will be extremely useful for setting up this 3-laser, 5-color machine. In this instrument, any of the 5 PMTs can "look at" any of the 3 laser beam/sample-stream intersection points. Also, we currently have a 5 watt argon-ion laser, a 10-watt argon-laser, and a 10-watt krypton-ion laser on this machine. Finally, a Coherent 590 dye laser can be inserted in front of the 10-watt argon. So we can dial up just about any wavelength we want. Your Rainbow beads will get exercized very thoroughly!"
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"We use Rainbow Calibration beads (RCP-30-5A) from Spherotech, which have eight peaks that fluoresce in all three PMTs simultaneously and include standardizations for FITC (MEFL), PE (MEPE), and PE-Cy5 (MEPCY). They are also very inexpensive.---" WebMaster's Note: RCP-30-5A is similar to RCP-30-5 (with six peaks) in all respect with the exception that it has two extra peaks inserted between the blank peak and the dimmest fluorescence peak. The RCP-30-5A is available at the same price as RCP-30-5. Please look up in the Product Listing page for the pricing information.
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"The SKY BLUE particles (0.4 & 2.0 um) from Spherotech have a unique emission at 730 nm and permitted six-color immunofluorescence analysis (see Beavis and Pennline; BioTechnique, vol 21, No. 3, pp 498~503, 1996). The SKY BLUE particles are excited with either a 633 nm or 647 nm laser line and with lower levels of autofluorescence in the red region, may provide advantages for detection of antigens expressed at low levels."
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We appreciate your comments and suggestions very much. Please keep on sending us your comments and suggestions.

SPHEROTECH IS THE BEST SOURCE FOR UNIFORM MICROPARTICLES

Last modified on Thursday, March 27, 1997