Plucking proteins from single cells

摘要

As part of a £5 million initiative of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, scientists in the UK have developed a microfluidic tool to mine proteins from cells.rnThe system, developed by Mark Neil, Oscar Ces and their colleagues at Imperial College London, uses oil droplets to solubilise and extract proteins from targeted points on a cell's plasma membrane. The spatially selective sampling is done without solubilisingthe whole membrane and so doesn't destroy the cell, meaning that the scientists can follow single cells to study how protein levels vary in both space and time.