What is it about?
This paper presents a first-of-its-kind automated and miniaturized pico-liter extraction system for single-cell MS. The key modules, including imaging, bus controller, and fluidic driving are customized to achieve satisfactory performance at affordable costs, resulting in a miniaturized system movable on a trolley and connectable with the MS. To enable automation, a single cell trapping device, new image-based one-pixel accuracy positioning methods for cells and micropipette, and a surface-tension-based 1-pL accuracy volume control scheme are developed.
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Why is it important?
The system has achieved better performance in consistency (~21%), sensitivity (~28%), and success rate (up to 40%) than manual operation. This automated and miniaturized system lays a solid basis for applying pico-ESI MS analysis in the automated and high-throughput single cell MS analysis, such as single-cell metabolomics and lipidomics.
Perspectives
We envisage that the automated cell extraction and pico-ESI-MS analysis system is an in-dispensable platform for large-scale deep single cell metabolites analysis, which can be used to directly probe cellular state, and further integrated with single cell genomics and proteomics to tackle important biological problems.
Professor Wenhui Wang
Tsinghua University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Automated and Miniaturized Pico-Liter Metabolite Extraction System for Single-Cell Mass Spectrometry, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, February 2023, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
DOI: 10.1109/tbme.2022.3194255.
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