Recent Advances in Electrochemiluminescence-Based Systems for Mammalian Cell Analysis

Mammalian cell analysis is essential in the context of both fundamental studies and clinical applications. Among the various techniques available for cell analysis, electrochemiluminescence (ECL) has attracted significant attention due to its integration of both electrochemical and spectroscopic methods. In this review, we summarize recent advances in the ECL-based systems developed for mammalian cell analysis. The review begins with a summary of the developments in luminophores that opened the door to ECL applications for biological samples. Secondly, ECL-based imaging systems are introduced as an emerging technique to visualize single-cell morphologies and intracellular molecules. In the subsequent section, the ECL sensors developed in the past decade are summarized, the use of which made the highly sensitive detection of cell-derived molecules possible. Although ECL immunoassays are well developed in terms of commercial use, the sensing of biomolecules at a single-cell level remains a challenge. Emphasis is therefore placed on ECL sensors that directly detect cellular molecules from small portions of cells or even single cells. Finally, the development of bipolar electrode devices for ECL cell assays is introduced. To conclude, the direction of research in this field and its application prospects are described.

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Recent Advances in Electrical Impedance Sensing Technology for Single-Cell Analysis

Biosensors ◽

10.3390/bios11110470 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (11) ◽

pp. 470

Author(s):

Zhao Zhang ◽

Xiaowen Huang ◽

Ke Liu ◽

Tiancong Lan ◽

Zixin Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Single Cell ◽

Electrical Impedance ◽

Single Cell Analysis ◽

Single Cells ◽

Clinical Diagnostics ◽

Cell Analysis ◽

Electrical Parameters ◽

Impedance Sensing ◽

Recent Advances ◽

Sensing Technology

Cellular heterogeneity is of significance in cell-based assays for life science, biomedicine and clinical diagnostics. Electrical impedance sensing technology has become a powerful tool, allowing for rapid, non-invasive, and label-free acquisition of electrical parameters of single cells. These electrical parameters, i.e., equivalent cell resistance, membrane capacitance and cytoplasm conductivity, are closely related to cellular biophysical properties and dynamic activities, such as size, morphology, membrane intactness, growth state, and proliferation. This review summarizes basic principles, analytical models and design concepts of single-cell impedance sensing devices, including impedance flow cytometry (IFC) to detect flow-through single cells and electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to monitor immobilized single cells. Then, recent advances of both electrical impedance sensing systems applied in cell recognition, cell counting, viability detection, phenotypic assay, cell screening, and other cell detection are presented. Finally, prospects of impedance sensing technology in single-cell analysis are discussed.

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Making a big thing of a small cell – recent advances in single cell analysis

The Analyst ◽

10.1039/c3an01939j ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 139 (6) ◽

pp. 1237-1273 ◽

Cited By ~ 75

Author(s):

Kerstin Galler ◽

Katharina Bräutigam ◽

Christina Große ◽

Jürgen Popp ◽

Ute Neugebauer

Keyword(s):

Single Cell ◽

Single Cell Analysis ◽

Single Cells ◽

Small Cell ◽

Cell Analysis ◽

Recent Advances ◽

Electrical Methods

All aspects of the characterisation of single cells are reviewed: from morphology to genetics and different omics-techniques to physiological, mechanical and electrical methods, including microfluidics and applications.

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Microfluidic platform accelerates tissue processing into single cells for molecular analysis and primary culture models

Nature Communications ◽

10.1038/s41467-021-23238-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Jeremy A. Lombardo ◽

Marzieh Aliaghaei ◽

Quy H. Nguyen ◽

Kai Kessenbrock ◽

Jered B. Haun

Keyword(s):

Single Cell ◽

Single Cell Analysis ◽

Single Cells ◽

Cell Analysis ◽

Processing Technologies ◽

Microfluidic Platform ◽

Tissue Processing ◽

Single Cell Rna Sequencing ◽

Culture Models ◽

Tissue Digestion

AbstractTissues are complex mixtures of different cell subtypes, and this diversity is increasingly characterized using high-throughput single cell analysis methods. However, these efforts are hindered, as tissues must first be dissociated into single cell suspensions using methods that are often inefficient, labor-intensive, highly variable, and potentially biased towards certain cell subtypes. Here, we present a microfluidic platform consisting of three tissue processing technologies that combine tissue digestion, disaggregation, and filtration. The platform is evaluated using a diverse array of tissues. For kidney and mammary tumor, microfluidic processing produces 2.5-fold more single cells. Single cell RNA sequencing further reveals that endothelial cells, fibroblasts, and basal epithelium are enriched without affecting stress response. For liver and heart, processing time is dramatically reduced. We also demonstrate that recovery of cells from the system at periodic intervals during processing increases hepatocyte and cardiomyocyte numbers, as well as increases reproducibility from batch-to-batch for all tissues.

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Recent advances in plasmonic nanostructures applied for label‐free single‐cell analysis

Electroanalysis ◽

10.1002/elan.202100330 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Xue-Wei Liao ◽

Qiu-Yang Xu ◽

Zheng Tan ◽

Yang Liu ◽

Chen Wang

Keyword(s):

Single Cell ◽

Single Cell Analysis ◽

Plasmonic Nanostructures ◽

Cell Analysis ◽

Label Free ◽

Recent Advances

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More than efficacy revealed by single-cell analysis of antiviral therapeutics

10.1101/606715 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Wu Liu ◽

Mehmet U. Caglar ◽

Zhangming Mao ◽

Andrew Woodman ◽

Jamie J. Arnold ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Single Cell ◽

Drug Targets ◽

Single Cell Analysis ◽

Single Cells ◽

Principal Component ◽

Viral Population ◽

Cell Analysis ◽

Toxic Dose ◽

Time Required

SUMMARYDevelopment of antiviral therapeutics emphasizes minimization of the effective dose and maximization of the toxic dose, first in cell culture and later in animal models. Long-term success of an antiviral therapeutic is determined not only by its efficacy but also by the duration of time required for drug-resistance to evolve. We have developed a microfluidic device comprised of ~6000 wells, with each well containing a microstructure to capture single cells. We have used this device to characterize enterovirus inhibitors with distinct mechanisms of action. In contrast to population methods, single-cell analysis reveals that each class of inhibitor interferes with the viral infection cycle in a manner that can be distinguished by principal component analysis. Single-cell analysis of antiviral candidates reveals not only efficacy but also properties of the members of the viral population most sensitive to the drug, the stage of the lifecycle most affected by the drug, and perhaps even if the drug targets an interaction of the virus with its host.

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μCB-seq: Microfluidic cell barcoding and sequencing for high-resolution imaging and sequencing of single cells

10.1101/2020.02.18.954974 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Tyler N. Chen ◽

Anushka Gupta ◽

Mansi Zalavadia ◽

Aaron M. Streets

Keyword(s):

High Resolution ◽

Single Cell ◽

Single Cell Analysis ◽

Protein Localization ◽

Single Cells ◽

Optical Measurements ◽

Detection Sensitivity ◽

High Resolution Imaging ◽

Cell Analysis ◽

Resolution Imaging

AbstractSingle-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) enables the investigation of complex biological processes in multicellular organisms with high resolution. However, many phenotypic features that are critical to understanding the functional role of cells in a heterogeneous tissue or organ are not directly encoded in the genome and therefore cannot be profiled with scRNA-seq. Quantitative optical microscopy has long been a powerful approach for characterizing diverse cellular phenotypes including cell morphology, protein localization, and chemical composition. Combining scRNA-seq with optical imaging has the potential to provide comprehensive single-cell analysis, allowing for functional integration of gene expression profiling and cell-state characterization. However, it is difficult to track single cells through both measurements; therefore, coupling current scRNA-seq protocols with optical measurements remains a challenge. Here, we report Microfluidic Cell Barcoding and Sequencing (μCB-seq), a microfluidic platform that combines high-resolution imaging and sequencing of single cells. μCB-seq is enabled by a novel fabrication method that preloads primers with known barcode sequences inside addressable reaction chambers of a microfluidic device. In addition to enabling multi-modal single-cell analysis, μCB-seq improves gene detection sensitivity, providing a scalable and accurate method for information-rich characterization of single cells.

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Simultaneous trimodal single-cell measurement of transcripts, epitopes, and chromatin accessibility using TEA-seq

eLife ◽

10.7554/elife.63632 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

Author(s):

Elliott Swanson ◽

Cara Lord ◽

Julian Reading ◽

Alexander T Heubeck ◽

Palak C Genge ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Gene Regulation ◽

Single Cell ◽

Human Peripheral Blood ◽

Single Cells ◽

Cell Types ◽

Chromatin Accessibility ◽

Specific Gene ◽

Test Case ◽

Cell Assays ◽

Paired Measurement

Single-cell measurements of cellular characteristics have been instrumental in understanding the heterogeneous pathways that drive differentiation, cellular responses to signals, and human disease. Recent advances have allowed paired capture of protein abundance and transcriptomic state, but a lack of epigenetic information in these assays has left a missing link to gene regulation. Using the heterogeneous mixture of cells in human peripheral blood as a test case, we developed a novel scATAC-seq workflow that increases signal-to-noise and allows paired measurement of cell surface markers and chromatin accessibility: integrated cellular indexing of chromatin landscape and epitopes, called ICICLE-seq. We extended this approach using a droplet-based multiomics platform to develop a trimodal assay that simultaneously measures transcriptomics (scRNA-seq), epitopes, and chromatin accessibility (scATAC-seq) from thousands of single cells, which we term TEA-seq. Together, these multimodal single-cell assays provide a novel toolkit to identify type-specific gene regulation and expression grounded in phenotypically defined cell types.

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Methods and sensors for functional genomic studies of cell-cycle transitions in single cells

Physiological Genomics ◽

10.1152/physiolgenomics.00065.2020 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 52 (10) ◽

pp. 468-477

Author(s):

Alexander C. Zambon ◽

Tom Hsu ◽

Seunghee Erin Kim ◽

Miranda Klinck ◽

Jennifer Stowe ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cell Cycle ◽

Single Cell ◽

Single Cell Analysis ◽

Imaging System ◽

Single Cells ◽

Cell Types ◽

Cell Analysis ◽

Mcf7 Cells ◽

Genomic Studies ◽

Cell Subpopulations

Much of our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms governing the cell cycle in mammals has relied heavily on methods that measure the aggregate state of a population of cells. While instrumental in shaping our current understanding of cell proliferation, these approaches mask the genetic signatures of rare subpopulations such as quiescent (G0) and very slowly dividing (SD) cells. Results described in this study and those of others using single-cell analysis reveal that even in clonally derived immortalized cancer cells, ∼1–5% of cells can exhibit G0 and SD phenotypes. Therefore to enable the study of these rare cell phenotypes we established an integrated molecular, computational, and imaging approach to track, isolate, and genetically perturb single cells as they proliferate. A genetically encoded cell-cycle reporter (K67p-FUCCI) was used to track single cells as they traversed the cell cycle. A set of R-scripts were written to quantify K67p-FUCCI over time. To enable the further study G0 and SD phenotypes, we retrofitted a live cell imaging system with a micromanipulator to enable single-cell targeting for functional validation studies. Single-cell analysis revealed HT1080 and MCF7 cells had a doubling time of ∼24 and ∼48 h, respectively, with high duration variability in G1 and G2 phases. Direct single-cell microinjection of mRNA encoding (GFP) achieves detectable GFP fluorescence within ∼5 h in both cell types. These findings coupled with the possibility of targeting several hundreds of single cells improves throughput and sensitivity over conventional methods to study rare cell subpopulations.

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Synchrotron macro ATR-FTIR microspectroscopy for high-resolution chemical mapping of single cells

The Analyst ◽

10.1039/c8an01543k ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 144 (10) ◽

pp. 3226-3238 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Jitraporn Vongsvivut ◽

David Pérez-Guaita ◽

Bayden R. Wood ◽

Philip Heraud ◽

Karina Khambatta ◽

...

Keyword(s):

High Resolution ◽

Single Cell ◽

Spatial Resolution ◽

Environmental Science ◽

Single Cell Analysis ◽

Single Cells ◽

Cell Analysis ◽

Chemical Mapping ◽

Ftir Microspectroscopy ◽

Resolution Single

Coupling synchrotron IR beam to an ATR element enhances spatial resolution suited for high-resolution single cell analysis in biology, medicine and environmental science.

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