μCB-seq: microfluidic cell barcoding and sequencing for high-resolution imaging and sequencing of single cells.

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) enables the investigation of complex biological processes in multicellular organisms with high resolution. However, many phenotypic features that are critical to understanding the functional role of cells in a heterogeneous tissue or organ are not directly encoded in the genome and therefore cannot be profiled with scRNA-seq. Quantitative optical microscopy has long been a powerful approach for characterizing diverse cellular phenotypes including cell morphology, protein localization, and chemical composition.