Population transcriptomics with single-cell resolution: a new field made possible by microfluidics: a technology for high throughput transcript counting and data-driven definition of cell types.

Tissues contain complex populations of cells. Like countries, which are comprised of mixed populations of people, tissues are not homogeneous. Gene expression studies that analyze entire populations of cells from tissues as a mixture are blind to this diversity.

A microfluidic device for on-chip agarose microbead generation with ultralow reagent consumption.

Water-in-oil microdroplets offer microreactors for compartmentalized biochemical reactions with high throughput. Recently, the combination with a sol-gel switch ability, using agarose-in-oil microdroplets, has increased the range of possible applications, allowing for example the capture of amplicons in the gel phase for the preservation of monoclonality during a PCR reaction. Here, we report a new method for generating such agarose-in-oil microdroplets on a microfluidic device, with minimized inlet dead volume, on-chip cooling, and in situ monitoring of biochemical reactions within the gelified microbeads.