In fields such as medical diagnosis, drug screening and discovery, green biomanufacturing, directed evolution of enzymes, and next-generation sequencing, how to implement omics analysis through multi-parallel and high-throughput platforms has become a pivotal issue required to be solved. In recent years, large-scale microfluidic droplets, serving as microreactors and compartmentalized laboratory, have emerged as a powerful tool for high-throughput analysis. At the cellular level, droplets generated at high frequency allow encapsulating individual cells, executing major typical cell manipulations, qualitative and quantitative detection of cells and their metabolites based on signal changes, and ultimately revealing cellular heterogeneity. Single cell-laden droplet microfluidics have revolutionized traditional bulk biochemical analysis, providing a well performed high-throughput analysis platform for exploring single-cell genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabonomics.
This Research Topic is intended to collect Original Research articles, Methods articles, Reviews, Mini-reviews, Perspective and Opinion articles. These articles will reflect the recent advances in microfluidic droplet platform for high-throughput single-cell analysis. Till now, droplet microfluidics still faces many challenges when applied in high-throughput analysis, such as damage to cell growth caused by the oil phase components and droplet loading, a large amount of empty droplets wastes limited by Poisson distribution, difficulties in online determination of metabolites, higher requirements on droplet dimension for specific cell types, compatibility and stability when manipulating cells within droplets, etc. New breakthroughs in droplet generation and sorting programs, novel approaches of operating cells inside droplets, innovative tools for signal sensing and screening, and versatile design practically applied to single-cell high-throughput analysis covering a wide range of fields, will be welcome in this Research Topic.
The following topic areas to be included, but not limited to, in this Research Topic are:
• Establishing novel high-sensitive signal amplification and detection strategies inside droplets, such as fluorescence, absorbance, Raman spectroscopy, Mass spectrometry, etc.
• Improving microfluidic emulsion templates and composite materials, obtaining multicomponent single-cell microreactors that can efficiently adapt to multiple types of cells, regulating and optimizing common processing such as droplet generation, cell encapsulation and culture, as well as droplet sorting, and exploring conditions and mechanisms of cells’ growth and reaction.
• Developing comprehensive droplet-based research methods or equipment applied in synthetic biology, green biofabrication, enzyme engineering, drug screening, digital PCR, next-generation sequencing, and biomarker assay in clinical diagnosis, highlighting single-cell level and high-throughput analysis.
Keywords:
Droplet, Microfluidics, Single-cell, High-throughput analysis, Microreactors
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
In fields such as medical diagnosis, drug screening and discovery, green biomanufacturing, directed evolution of enzymes, and next-generation sequencing, how to implement omics analysis through multi-parallel and high-throughput platforms has become a pivotal issue required to be solved. In recent years, large-scale microfluidic droplets, serving as microreactors and compartmentalized laboratory, have emerged as a powerful tool for high-throughput analysis. At the cellular level, droplets generated at high frequency allow encapsulating individual cells, executing major typical cell manipulations, qualitative and quantitative detection of cells and their metabolites based on signal changes, and ultimately revealing cellular heterogeneity. Single cell-laden droplet microfluidics have revolutionized traditional bulk biochemical analysis, providing a well performed high-throughput analysis platform for exploring single-cell genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabonomics.
This Research Topic is intended to collect Original Research articles, Methods articles, Reviews, Mini-reviews, Perspective and Opinion articles. These articles will reflect the recent advances in microfluidic droplet platform for high-throughput single-cell analysis. Till now, droplet microfluidics still faces many challenges when applied in high-throughput analysis, such as damage to cell growth caused by the oil phase components and droplet loading, a large amount of empty droplets wastes limited by Poisson distribution, difficulties in online determination of metabolites, higher requirements on droplet dimension for specific cell types, compatibility and stability when manipulating cells within droplets, etc. New breakthroughs in droplet generation and sorting programs, novel approaches of operating cells inside droplets, innovative tools for signal sensing and screening, and versatile design practically applied to single-cell high-throughput analysis covering a wide range of fields, will be welcome in this Research Topic.
The following topic areas to be included, but not limited to, in this Research Topic are:
• Establishing novel high-sensitive signal amplification and detection strategies inside droplets, such as fluorescence, absorbance, Raman spectroscopy, Mass spectrometry, etc.
• Improving microfluidic emulsion templates and composite materials, obtaining multicomponent single-cell microreactors that can efficiently adapt to multiple types of cells, regulating and optimizing common processing such as droplet generation, cell encapsulation and culture, as well as droplet sorting, and exploring conditions and mechanisms of cells’ growth and reaction.
• Developing comprehensive droplet-based research methods or equipment applied in synthetic biology, green biofabrication, enzyme engineering, drug screening, digital PCR, next-generation sequencing, and biomarker assay in clinical diagnosis, highlighting single-cell level and high-throughput analysis.
Keywords:
Droplet, Microfluidics, Single-cell, High-throughput analysis, Microreactors
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.