The stochastic nature of biological systems inherently leads to heterogeneous cell populations. To date, most bioanalytical methods measure cell assembly averages, obscuring the cell heterogeneity and the biomolecular interaction networks. Therefore, single cell investigation is crucial for future studies. However, single cell analysis is hindered by three main obstacles: First, the tiny amount of analyte, second, the sample conditioning required for the analysis, and third, the difficulty connecting single cell cultivation and the employed detection instrumentation.

The specific aim of the SCeNA project is to combine a newly developed single cell culturing and cell lysis device with various bioanalysis methods that characterize different aspects of the cell status (Fig. 1): (A) label and amplification free transcriptomics using nanomechanical viscosity sensors; (B) protein detection by enhanced reverse phase protein microarrays; (C) visual proteomics by visually analyzing the cytosolic proteins using high-speed atomic force microscopy; (D) metabolomics by mass spectrometry.

SCeNA combines micro-technological, “nanoenhanced” classical and novel nanomechanical methods for cell culturing, single cell lysis and analysis.