
What to Expect When You're Expecting
What? Why is Pratip writing about pregnancy? No, we don't have that kind of announcement (LOL!). But... my commentary on a very interesting article by Aghaeepour, et al. was just published in Science Immunology. It's a "Science Immunology : Focus" article about systems immunology. Follow the link to my commentary: http://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/2/15/eaao3543/tab-article-info And to the Aghaeepour, et al paper: http://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/2/15/eaan294

Ring of Fire Plots
"I fell into a burning ring of fire..." (Johnny Cash, 1963) One of the challenges of working with high parameter data is how complicated it is to explore and present. It is easy to get burned by bad data presentation, which can frustrate audiences of a paper or talk, or can - more dangerously - lead to mis-interpretation of the data. The goal for any high parameter graphic should be to completely present the data, allowing viewers to appreciate fine subsets (or at least reco


Two-second Tip: Review panels without NXN plots
When building multicolor panels, it's important to examine every parameter against every other parameter. Why? Compensation, spreading, or fluorescence aggregates in one channel may look like "real" populations in another. By examining every marker against every other marker, you can identify these problems and fix them before you report an artifact. FlowJo has a great tool - the NXN plot for this. The problem, though, is when the panel is large, the NXN plot becomes unwi

Two-second Tip: Presentation-ready Axes for Flow Cytometry Data
Don't present your data like this, for goodness' sake: We can't see the labels for the axes and the gate frequency is obscuring population of interest. Don't bother trying the fix this in PowerPoint, either... you'll waste a bunch of time remaking the axis labels, and - in this case - trying to find the Symbol font in the menu (arrrrrrgh!!!): Instead, use this two-second tip to start with presentation ready graphics straight out of FlowJo (v9, for Mac). Go to the FlowJo men