Microfluidic single-cell analysis—Toward integration and total on-chip analysis

Single cell analysis on microfluidic devices.

There is significant variability among cells of the same type at the single cell level. This variability may be because of external stimuli that vary temporally or spatially among a population of cells. It may also be owing to the nonsynchronized responses of cells to various stimuli. In addition, differences in otherwise similar cells may be generated by genetic mutations acquired by one or mo...

Microfluidic single-cell mRNA isolation and analysis.

Single-cell gene expression analysis holds great promise for studying diverse biological systems, but methodology to process these precious samples in a reproducible, quantitative, and parallel fashion remains challenging. Here, we utilize microfluidics to isolate picogram and subpicogram mRNA templates, as well as to synthesize cDNA from these templates. We demonstrate single-cell mRNA isolati...

Antibody analysis by microfluidic on a chip

Microfluidic single-cell analysis of intracellular compounds.

Biological analyses traditionally probe cell ensembles in the range of 103-106 cells, thereby completely averaging over relevant individual cell responses, such as differences in cell proliferation, responses to external stimuli or disease onset. In past years, this fact has been realized and increasing interest has evolved for single-cell analytical methods, which could give exciting new insig...

Microfluidic device for single-cell analysis.

We have developed a novel microfluidic device constructed from poly(dimethylsiloxane) using multilayer soft lithography technology for the analysis of single cells. The microfluidic network enables the passive and gentle separation of a single cell from the bulk cell suspension, and integrated valves and pumps enable the precise delivery of nanoliter volumes of reagents to that cell. Various ap...