Sequencing cells without killing them using subcellular biopsies

Discover how live-seq can capture molecular dynamics of a single cell and provide temporal readouts of cellular state transitions. All, because it keeps the cells alive.

Sequencing of thousands of cells can reveal the intricacy and abundance of different cell types and states within a population. However, when inferring cell trajectories, we are still faced with the fundamental conundrum that we cannot measure the same cell along its trajectory. As such, the dynamics of underlying biological processes must be assumed from static snapshots of different cells at different stages. As a result, differential expression patterns of minor cell populations might be missed, which can become problematic when few cells within a population change their fate and dedifferentiate into a cancerous or metastatic state.

In this webinar, we present Live-cell sequencing (Live-seq), a new approach for direct transcriptomic readouts of single cells. Live-seq utilizes subcellular biopsies to record the transcriptome of a cell while keeping it alive. 

As first shown by Chen et al. in Nature (2022), a cytoplasmic biopsy contains a transcriptomic snapshot, which is a faithful representation of lysed cell transcriptomes and enables direct correlation of a cell’s initial transcriptional state to its future phenotypical outcome, even at different time points.

By measuring the cellular state of the same cell before and after a certain stimulus, direct evidence can be collected to link a particular gene expression profile to a causal outcome. Such direct correlations can provide a valuable tool to complement traditional inference methods and become crucial when the signature of elusive cellular dynamics is hidden in noise abundance.

During this webinar Dr. Tamás Gerecsei, Instrument Sales Manager, will take you along to explain how Live-seq works with a special focus on how the FluidFM OMNIUM platform facilitates the single-cell biopsy workflow. A comprehensive demonstration of the experiment will also be presented.

Register for this webinar to learn:

• How 1-2 pL cytoplasmic biopsies are collected from HeLa and Panc1 cells on the FluidFM OMNIUM platform while keeping them alive.
• How cells are tracked inside the platform to enable sampling of the same cell 24h later.

• How cytoplasmic biopsies from Panc-1 cells, containing less-than-a-cell worth of RNA, can be analyzed using LuthorHD to record single-cell transcriptomes.