A portable and cost-effective microfluidic system for massively parallel single-cell transcriptome profiling

Chuanyu Liu; Tao Wu; Fan Fei; Ya Liu; Liang Wu; Michael Junkin; Zhifeng Wang; Yeya Yu; Weimao Wang; Wenbo Wei; Yue Yuan; Mingyue Wang; Mengnan Cheng; Xiaoyu Wei; Jiangshan Xu; Quan Shi; Shiping Liu; Ao Chen; Ou Wang; Ming An Ni; Wenwei Zhang; Zhouchun Shang; Yiwei Lai; Pengcheng Guo; Carl Ward; Giacomo Volpe; Lei Wang; Huan Zheng; Yang Liu; Brock A. Peters

doi:10.1101/818450

bioRxivNov 27, 2019GenomicsPreprint

A portable and cost-effective microfluidic system for massively parallel single-cell transcriptome profiling

Chuanyu Liu iD, Tao Wu iD, Fan Fei iD, Ya Liu iD, Liang Wu iD, Michael Junkin iD, Zhifeng Wang iD, Yeya Yu, Weimao Wang, Wenbo Wei, Yue Yuan iD, Mingyue Wang iD, Mengnan Cheng, Xiaoyu Wei iD, Jiangshan Xu iD, Quan Shi iD, Shiping Liu iD, Ao Chen iD, Ou Wang iD, Ming An Ni iD, Wenwei Zhang iD, Zhouchun Shang iD, Yiwei Lai iD, Pengcheng Guo, Carl Ward iD, , Longqi Liu iD

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Abstract

Single-cell technologies are becoming increasingly widespread and have been revolutionizing our understanding of cell identity, state, diversity and function. However, current platforms can be slow to apply to large-scale studies and resource-limited clinical arenas due to a variety of reasons including cost, infrastructure, sample quality and requirements. Here we report DNBelab C4 (C4), a negative pressure orchestrated, portable and cost-effective device that enables high-throughput single-cell transcriptional profiling. C4 system can efficiently allow discrimination of species-specific cells at high resolution and dissect tissue heterogeneity in different organs, such as murine lung and cerebral cortex. Finally, we show that the C4 system is comparable to existing platforms but has huge benefits in cost and portability and, as such, it will be of great interest for the wider scientific community.

Abstract summary

Claude Opus 5.5 · xhigh effort · 2 Nov 2026 · from the abstract · CC BY-ND 4.0

The DNBelab C4 portable, negative-pressure microfluidic device performs high-throughput single-cell transcriptome profiling, resolving species-specific cells and tissue heterogeneity in murine lung and cerebral cortex comparably to existing platforms.

Existing single-cell transcriptomics platforms can be difficult to deploy in large-scale studies or resource-limited clinical settings because of high costs, infrastructure demands, and sample requirements. DNBelab C4 introduces a portable, cost-effective microfluidic device driven by negative pressure that achieves single-cell transcriptional profiling comparable to established platforms.

Key results

SuggestedThe negative-pressure DNBelab C4 microfluidic device discriminates species-specific cells at high resolution and resolves cellular heterogeneity in murine lung and cerebral cortex with performance comparable to existing single-cell platforms.
Evaluated on discrimination of species-specific cells and dissection of tissue heterogeneity in murine lung and cerebral cortex (no cell counts or named comparator platforms are provided in the abstract). · Abstract

Methods, data and reproducibility

The authors developed DNBelab C4 (C4), a portable microfluidic device driven by negative pressure for high-throughput single-cell transcriptome profiling, and tested its ability to separate species-specific cells and characterize cell types in mouse lung and cerebral cortex against existing platforms.

Murine lung and cerebral cortex tissues and species-specific single-cell samples · mouse, multiple species

Methods & tools: DNBelab C4
Reproducibility gaps: No data accessions, code repositories, or quantitative cost and throughput figures are provided in the abstract.

Limitations (1)

The abstract does not report cell capture numbers, doublet rates, gene detection sensitivity, cost figures, or the specific commercial platforms used for comparison. · noted in this summary

Read this if you need a portable, low-cost microfluidic device for high-throughput scRNA-seq in field or resource-limited laboratory settings.