Linking single-cell measurements of mass, growth rate, and gene expression
Robert J. Kimmerling, Sanjay M. Prakadan, Alejandro J. Gupta, Nicholas L. Calistri, Mark M. Stevens, Selim Olcum, Nathan Cermak, Riley S. Drake, Kristine Pelton, Frederik De Smet, Keith L. Ligon, Alex K. Shalek, Scott R. Manalis (see publication in Journal or in Research Gate )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.