Gating is a method that is used in flow cytometry to isolate cells, thereby selecting a cell population of interest. An electronic "gate" is placed around the cells that have the same light scatter or fluorescence properties.
The white oval in the cytogram below is drawn around the lymphocyte population in the tested sample. This selection of a specific cell population is very important because the extrinsic/fluorescent CD marker data (shown in the histogram on the right) directly reflects the population "gated" in the cytogram.
