Counting tranfected cells carrying betagal? Ideas and suggestions?

[Ivan Brukner]

I am trying to quantitate numbers of cells that pick up beta-gal in 
a transfection experiment.  I have tried to count groups of cells after 
fixing and staining but I want better statistics... The numbers I am 
counting could be potentially quite small (perhaps 1 in 10,000 to 100,000 
).  

Does anyone know of a company that cells petri dishes with gridlines 
(smaller than the standard 1 cm X 1 cm phage plates) for counting cells 
accurately? 

If not, how the hell are people counting there cells?  I know you can
just make extracts of plates of cells and look at absorbance for instance 
but that won`t help me.  Also I know about facs sorting but that is a 
little expensive for preliminary studies... 


Thanks for any and all suggestions!


G. Dellaire

dellaire at odyssee.net