The demo made by SONY on the Campus of Luminy, in the CIPHE Institute last week was a unique oportunity to analyse some sea water on the brand new generation of flow cytometer developed by SONY.
This instrument is equiped with a blue and a red laser beam excitation and by a spectral device capable to collect up to 32 channels of fluorecence. It is therefore possible to get a good picture of the spectrum of fluorescence between 500 and 800 nm induced by the 488 N laser beam (minus the wavelength range removed by the notch filter used to prevent the red laser beam to reach the 32-channel PMT).
The picture below displays the results obtained. As could be expected, the various clusters identified on more conventional flow cytometers do show up on the SONY SP6800 as well. Even the very small and dim Prochlorococcus can be evidnced on the plots.

Obviously some more tests in real conditions (in a lab, on a ship, with several samples) should be performed to test further the cytometer and take advantage of the full potential of the new SONY instrument, and more particularly of the spectral fingerprint.

To be continued....