Archive for January, 2012

Cytobank User Stories: Sean Bendall, Ph.D.

Welcome to our inaugural issue of Cytobank User Stories, a series featuring interviews with Cytobank users on their research, scientific vision, and use of flow cytometry.

First up is Sean Bendall, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Garry Nolan’s lab at Stanford University. Sean’s recent publications include his work on mass cytometry as well as SPADE (available in hosted models of Cytobank).

We’d be happy to hear what you think. Send us feedback and let us know who you’d like to hear from (including yourself)!

What are you excited about in science? What is your scientific vision?

Sean Bendall, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral fellow, Nolan lab
Stanford University

The thought of finding new biological paradigms is what gets me most excited.  There are many basic things in life that happen (biologically / biochemically – that is) which we take for granted.  However the underlying mechanism of many of these is completely unknown to us, and thus when they go awry we have little recourse to address them therapeutically.  Currently, in the context of the human genome, we really only have a grasp on about 20% of what’s there.  My overriding goal would be to develop methods / systems to help rapidly fill in this knowledge gap.  Because of the complexity (heterogeneity) of the human system, I believe that single-cell approaches will be best in addressing this and therefore my work will only put an increasing demand on analysis platforms to accommodate it.

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January 23, 2012 at 10:33 am Leave a comment

Introducing the Newly Redesigned Cytobank Support Portal

If you’ve clicked the “Support” link at the top of the Cytobank webpage, you may have noticed that our support portal has a new look and some new features.

Search our Knowledge Base

Our new support site has a Knowledge Base filled with articles to augment your Cytobank experience. You’ll find tutorials on our functionalities using real datasets, articles guiding you in both basic and advanced Cytobank usage, and answers to frequently asked questions. You can browse through article sections or conduct a keyword search of the Knowledge Base.

What kind of support can I receive from Cytobank?

We offer a wide range of support for your flow cytometry endeavors:

  • One-on-one WebEx-based training to get you started using Cytobank
  • Biology consulting support: How to design experiments, what to measure, selecting reagents, how to build figures, how to share datasets from your peer-reviewed publications
  • Troubleshooting
  • Data security
  • Technical support for networks
  • Inquiries about getting started with premium functionalities such as SPADE and dose response

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January 21, 2012 at 9:43 pm Leave a comment

Getting Your Lab Organized on Cytobank

With a new year ahead of us, you might be thinking it’s time for a fresh start. Maybe it’s time to organize the experiments that resulted from a flurry of work at the end of last year, or maybe you manage a lab and would like to keep past and ongoing experiments organized as people join and leave the lab. In this post, we’ll share our thoughts on how Cytobank can help you achieve these goals.

Hosted models of Cytobank

You may be familiar with our main server at http://www.cytobank.org/cytobank/, but did you know that we can host an instance of Cytobank specifically for your lab group? With these hosted solutions, your lab manager or PI controls who has access to your server and can guide the group in configuring projects to keep various research branches well organized. Read our previous post on Projects to learn more about Projects. Hosted models of Cytobank also have the advantage of offering you premium functionality that isn’t available on our main server, such as SPADE and dose response.
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January 21, 2012 at 12:04 pm Leave a comment

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