Linking single-cell measurements of mass, growth rate, and gene expression

Biology Biology
Cancer Cancer
Genomics Genomics
Physics Physics
R&D R&D
Technology Technology
Alejandro Gupta Alejandro Gupta
Alex K. Shalek Alex K. Shalek
Jay Prakadan Jay Prakadan
Riley Drake Riley Drake

Kimmerling R.J. et al.▾ Kimmerling R.J., Prakadan S.M., Gupta A.J., Calistri N.L., Stevens M.M., Olcum S., Cermak N., Drake R.S., Pelton K., De Smet F., Ligon K.L., Shalek A.K., Manalis S.R

Genome Biology , Volume 19

November, 2018

Abstract

Mass and growth rate are highly integrative measures of cell physiology not discernable via genomic measurements. Here, we introduce a microfluidic platform enabling direct measurement of single-cell mass and growth rate upstream of highly multiplexed single-cell profiling such as single-cell RNA sequencing. We resolve transcriptional signatures associated with single-cell mass and growth rate in L1210 and FL5.12 cell lines and activated CD8+ T cells. Further, we demonstrate a framework using these linked measurements to characterize biophysical heterogeneity in a patient-derived glioblastoma cell line with and without drug treatment. Our results highlight the value of coupled phenotypic metrics in guiding single-cell genomics.