PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Rønn Olsen, Lars
AU  - Benso, Alfredo
AU  - Politano, Gianfranco
AU  - Barnkob, Mike Bogetofte
TI  - Minimizing spectral overlap in multicolor flow cytometry experiments
AID  - 10.1101/2021.03.17.435861
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.03.17.435861
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/06/2021.03.17.435861.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/06/2021.03.17.435861.full
AB  - Selecting fluorochromes for polychromatic panels for flow cytometry is complex and time-consuming. Poorly designed panels can result in overlap between the emission spectra of the different fluorochromes, making their signals difficult to separate. While assessing all possible panels is simple to do programmatically, the combinatorial complexity of most real world problems renders brute force computation impractical. Here we present a novel complexity optimization algorithm for fast design of minimal spectral overlap fluorochrome combinations. To aid researchers in designing fluorochrome panels we implemented the algorithm in a web server, Spectracular, that also considers instrument laser configuration and allows users to define various constraints related to antibody-fluorochrome availability and marker co-expression.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.