Recent advances in cell surface and intracellular marker identification and single-cell analyses led to greater resolution and high-throughput ex-vivo quantification. Flow cytometric quantification can be used to purify adipocytes from the stromal vascular fraction of most fat depots. Early research with such machinery cited adipocytes as too large and fragile for cytometer-based purification, rendering them susceptible to lysis; however, recent advances have been made to mitigate this; nevertheless, this methodology continues to pose technical challenges and is inaccessible to much of the research community.
