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When flow data is collected at the cytometer
a data file is created in a specific format called FCS. Each FCS data
file has two essential components, the description of the conditions
at the time of collection, and the sets of numbers measured for each
event. Whereas the cytometer formats all of the numerical data automatically,
it is up to the operator to correctly specify the conditions. Keywords
organize the non-numeric information in FCS files and each keyword
is designated with a $three letter code.
The names of the reagents used to stain each tube of cells is very useful information to have when analyzing you data. In the case that the sample was not properly annotated during collected, some or all of this information may be missing or incorrect. It is very common that data will be collected with labels FL1, FL2, FL3, etc., but missing the staining reagent - making it difficult to understand the nature of the experiment. FlowJo also uses this information in the creation of groups, so it will be hindered in your attempts to, for instance, apply the same gates to all samples stained with CD3 & CD4. To edit the keywords, you must first be displaying those keywords in the workspace. Double click on the keyword you wish to edit (even
if the box is blank). As in the figure below, you will see that
the information is redrawn with a box around it, and a popup triangle
to offer choices of existing values At this point you may type in a new value for this
keyword. Alternately, if you click on the triangle, a menu will
appear containing all of the values used for that keyword in the
current workspace. Select any of these choices to Note that the changes you make to the keywords are only saved within the current workspace. If you change a keyword, and then add that file to a different workspace, the change will not be seen in the second context. In order to make persistent changes to the keyword values in the FCS files themselves, you should use ProJo, a companion utility created explicitly for this purpose. If you need to make changes to large numbers of files, ProJo will also be more convenient for the task. See the following topics for more information:
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of
the keyword.
change
the existing keyword to that value. Choosing the item out of the
list is the recommended method if possible, because it guarantees
that typographical errors will not yield different samples which
are labeled with minor differences that may not be noticed by the
user, but still prevent FlowJo's batch processors from handling
the data in the same way.