| Summary | Single cell transcriptomics has emerged as a powerful approach to dissecting phenotypic heterogeneity in complex, unsynchronized cellular populations. However, many important biological questions demand quantitative analysis of large numbers of individual cells. Hence, new tools are urgently needed for efficient, inexpensive, and parallel manipulation of RNA from individual cells. We report a simple microfluidic platform for trapping single cell lysates in sealed, picoliter microwells capable of “printing†RNA on glass or capturing RNA on polymer beads. To demonstrate the utility of our system for single cell transcriptomics, we developed a highly scalable technology for genome-wide, single cell RNA-Seq. The current implementation of our device is pipette-operated, profiles hundreds of individual cells in parallel with library preparation costs of ~$0.10-$0.20/cell, and includes five lanes for simultaneous experiments. We anticipate that this system will ultimately serve as a general platform for large-scale single cell transcriptomics, compatible with both imaging and sequencing readouts.type = Expression profiling by high throughput sequencing |
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