A mannitol-based buffer improves single-cell RNA sequencing of high-salt marine cells.

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) enables discovery of novel cell states by transcriptomic profiling with minimal prior knowledge, making it useful for studying non-model organisms. For most marine organisms, however, cells are viable at a higher salinity than is compatible with scRNA-seq, impacting data quality and cell representation. We show that a low-salinity phosphate buffer supplemented with D-mannitol (PBS-M) enables higher-quality scRNA-seq of blood cells from the tunicate .

Catalytic Arylhydroxylation of Dehydroalanine in Continuous Flow for Simple Access to Unnatural Amino Acids.

This report discloses the first example of catalytic arylhydroxylation of dehydroalanine with aryldiazonium salts. Aryldiazonium salts, which are generated from aniline precursors under partially aqueous conditions in continuous flow, efficiently reacted with dehydroalanine in the presence of 10-15 mol % ferrocene to furnish α-hydroxyarylalanine derivatives (up to 82 % yield). The reactions proceeded with regioselectivity, broad functional group tolerance, and without polymerization of the dehydroalanine.