Question
How many cells do I need for the sorting?
Answer
To answer this question, the following information is required:
- What is the percentage of the target cell population?
- How many cells do you need after sorting?
- What is more important: high purity or overall yield?
- How fragile or large are the cells?
The duration of the sorting procedure depends on all these parameters.
Here is an example:
How many cells should I prepare to obtain 1×10⁶ cells of a population that represents 10% of the sample?
1×10⁶ = 0.1 [10% target population] × 10×10⁶ starting cells.
However, the actual yield is typically around 80–90% of this theoretical value.
Therefore, the starting number of cells should be:
10×10⁶ × 100 / [80–90] = 11–12.5×10⁶ cells.
The yield can be significantly lower if the cells are of poor quality (low viability, aggregation, etc.) or if high purity is required.
It’s also important to remember that a portion of the sample will be used to set up the sorter.
If it’s your first time sorting a particular sample, you may need more cells than in subsequent experiments.