Making single-cell RNA sequencing widely available
Sequencing messenger RNA molecules from individual cells offers a glimpse into the lives of those cells, revealing what they’re doing at a particular time. However, the equipment required to do this kind of analysis is cumbersome and not widely available. MIT researchers have now developed a portable technology that can rapidly prepare the RNA of many cells for sequencing simultaneously, which they believe will enable more widespread use of this approach. The new technology, known as Seq-Well, could allow scientists to more easily identify different cell types found in tissue samples, helping them to study how immune cells fight infection and how cancer cells respond to treatment, among other applications. “Rather than trying to pick one marker that defines a cell type, using single-cell RNA sequencing we can go in and look at everything a cell is expressing at a given moment. By finding common patterns across cells, we can figure out...