Flow-Lysometry and its Biomedical Application: Cytosolic Analysis of Single Cells in Large Populations

We present a novel single-cell analyzer, flow-lysometry, to measure cytosolic components in large cell populations. The present flow-lysometry performs and synchronizes three functions (cell-detection, cell-lysis, and component-sensing) in a continuous microfluidic channel, thus achieving high-throughput measurements (20 cells/min) of wide target components. In the experimental study, we measure the cytosolic component (Ca++ ion) from each single RBC and verify population analysis of single cells in mixed cell populations. Thus, this work shows that the present flow-lysometry is useful to characterize complex cell populations, which is required for various biomedical studies.