A new tool can sort and isolate cells based on complex differences within the cell structure, a breakthrough that should enable new research on the origins of disease.
Traditional cell sorting, known as flow cytometry, can physically separate based on features of the entire cell, such as the total amount of a specific protein it contains. But that method is blind to many differences between cells. For example, if two cells had the same amount of a protein, but the protein was clustered in the nucleus of one cell and the cytoplasm of another, flow cytometry wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
“There’s a huge diversity of cellular and subcellular phenotypes that cannot be captured using traditional flow cytometry,” says Daniel Schraivogel, a research staff scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory lab in Heidelberg, and lead author on the study describing the new cell sorting technology.
The device uses the basic architecture of a traditional flow cytometric cell sorter: Cells are shunted through a narrow channel until they are traveling single-file at a speed of 1 m/sec. Their path takes them, one-by-one, past a laser. Optical devices measure the scattering of light from the cells, and specialized software rapidly analyzes the data to make sorting decisions. By “tagging” particular proteins or cell components with fluorescent dyes, researchers...
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