Optical Tweezer Assisted Static Pool Imaging for Single Cell Sorting (OPSI), an innovative technology offers precise, low-damage, and versatile single-cell sorting, enabling straightforward acquisition of single-cell phenotypes essential for targeted analysis in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics.

OPSI technology enables "what you see is what you get" selection of target single cells under bright-field, fluorescence, or Raman imaging, facilitating high-quality single-cell genome/transcriptome sequencing across a broad range of cell sizes, from bacteria and archaea to fungi, plants, animals, and human cells.

The process involves creating a stable static flow field within a microfluidic chip to confine sample cells. Within this static flow field, cells are imaged using bright-field or fluorescence microscopy, or scanned using Raman spectroscopy to identify the target cells. A low-damage 1064 nm optical trap (laser tweezers) is then utilized to extract the targeted single cell from the static flow field. The cell is encapsulated in a microdroplet and sorted out, completing the selection process.

OPSI technology boasts a high sorting accuracy exceeding 99.7% and maintains a sorting throughput of 10-20 cells per minute while preserving cell viability. It mitigates amplification bias common in traditional single-cell genome amplification, making it invaluable for single-cell multi-omics research.

Reference:

Teng Xu#, Yuandong Li#, Xiao Han, Lingyan Kan, Jing Ren, Luyang Sun, Zhidian Diao, Yuetong Ji, Pengfei Zhu, Jian Xu*, Bo Ma*. Versatile, facile and low-cost single-cell isolation, culture and sequencing by optical tweezer-assisted pool-screening. Lab on a Chip, 2022, 23(1): 125-135.