Link to Pubmed [PMID] – 34910303
Link to DOI – 10.1002/eji.202170123
Eur J Immunol 2021 12; 51(12): 2703
The last issue of 2021 of the European Journal of Immunology (EJI) is special in that it features, among other article types, the third edition of the ‘Guidelines for the use of flow cytometry and cell sorting in immunological studies’. Publishing this updated edition of the Guidelines should not be a surprise for the immunological community. EJI is one of the first journals recognised for its policy, which mandates that the flow cytometry data include the following information: (i) a full gating strategy, including the position of the positive and negative controls, (ii) the percentage of cells in the region/gate/event count, and statistics as appropriate, (iii) the marker (e.g. antigen), the fluorochrome/dye and (iv) the scaling (log/lin). These different experimental details are vital, because not only do they assure data quality, but they also help other researchers improve their presentation and design better experimental strategies. This format is particularly helpful for those researchers performing flow cytometry experiments on a given subset for the very first time. As such, our Guidelines represent an important resource to encourage best practices in flow cytometry across the wide immunological community.