A flow cytometry-based protocol to measure lymphocyte viability upon metabolic stress

Abstract

Distinct lymphocyte subpopulations display discrete metabolic profiles and are differently affected by metabolic resource variations, making the analysis of lymphocyte survival in a complex tissue in response to metabolic stress highly challenging. Here we describe a flow cytometry-based method allowing simultaneous cell identification and viable cell counting in mixed lymphocyte populations without extensive cell subset purification procedures. The example provided herein illustrates the role of AMPK in T lymphocyte survival in response to the mitochondrial poison oligomycin.