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Updated: Aug 18, 2026
Automation of the Micronucleus Assay Using Imaging Flow Cytometry and Artificial Intelligence
Published on: January 27, 2023
[Automatic analysis of micronuclei by flow cytometry using anti-CD71-FITC and PI staining]
Ming-Jie Yang1, Jian-Chang Zhou, Zhi Li
1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou 510300, China. ymingjie@sohu.com
Objective:
To explore flow cytometry (FCM) based method for automatic analysis of micronuclei (MN) in cells staining with anti-CD71-FITC and PI.
Methods:
Cell were fixed in -85 degrees C methanol and stained with anti-CD71-FITC and PI, instrument was optimized using malaria-infected erythrocytes as biological standards, a FCM based method for automatic analysis of micronuclei was established. In order to estimate the reliability of the method, the frequencies of micronucleated reticulocytes (MN-RET) in peripheral blood of NIH mice treated with colchicine (COL) was detected using the method.
Results:
Four cell populations, normochromatic erythrocytes (NCE), reticulocytes (RET), micronucleated erythrocytes (MN-NCE) and MN-RET could be clearly resolved on the FL1-FL2 dot plot using this method. COL induced a dose-dependent increases in the frequency MN-RET in peripheral blood. Data obtained manually and automatically showed a strong linear correlation (r = 0.98) as far as the percentage of MN-RET.
Conclusions:
The FCM-based automatic technique using FITC-anti-CD71 and PI staining is a reliable tool for micronucleus analysis.
