Quantification of BCL-2 Family Members by Flow Cytometry

Flow cytometry is a powerful technique for the detection and quantification of cell surface and intracellular proteins. It enables the ability to measure the expression levels of specific proteins in a cell population of interest without the need to physically separate out the cells from within a heterogeneous population by using the appropriate cell-specific markers. It also requires fewer cells than other traditional techniques such as Western blotting. Here we describe a robust and reproducible method to measure the expression levels of the BCL-2 family members, BCL-2, BCL-X_L, and MCL-1 by quantitative flow cytometry (QFCM) using validated antibodies.