The ability to add reagents to drops in a sequential fashion is necessary for numerous applications of microfluidics in biology. An important method for accomplishing this is picoinjection, a technique in which reagents are injected into aqueous drops usin

© The Author(s) 2014.Cell sorting is a central tool in life science research for analyzing cellular heterogeneity or enriching rare cells out of large populations. Although methods like FACS and FISH-FC can characterize and isolate cells from heterogeneous

In this game, a person struggles with identity and anxiety in a new environment, through a music-driven narrative. With time chasing behind them and looming ahead of them, they can't seem to find their place. Experience their story.

In this game, a person struggles with identity and anxiety in a new environment, through a music-driven narrative. With time chasing behind them and looming ahead of them, they can't seem to find their place. Experience their story.

© 2015 Lim et al. Microbial systems often exhibit staggering diversity, making the study of rare, interesting species challenging. For example, metagenomic analyses of mixed-cell populations are often dominated by the sequences of the most abundant organis

© The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research. Targeted sequence enrichment enables better identification of genetic variation by providing increased sequencing coverage for genomic regions of interest. Here

Nucleic acids encode the information of life, programming cellular functions and dictating many biological outcomes. Differentiating between cells based on their nucleic acid programs is, thus, a powerful way to unravel the genetic bases of many phenotypes. This is especially important considering that most cells exist in heterogeneous populations, requiring them to be isolated before they can be studied. Existing flow cytometry techniques, however, are unable to reliably recover specific cells based on nucleic acid content. Nucleic acid cytometry is a new field built on droplet microfluidics that allows robust identification, sorting, and sequencing of cells based on specific nucleic acid biomarkers. This review highlights applications that immediately benefit from the approach, biological questions that can be addressed for the first time with it, and considerations for building successful workflows.

In recent history, efforts towards the construction of a transcription regulatory network for Geobacter sulfurreducens have been made in order to model, and ultimately optimize its metabolic activity for bioremediation and clean energy production applications. To contribute to this effort, Fnr-1, a transcription regulator in G. sulfurreducens, was investigated via chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled to microarray analysis (ChIP-chip) and high throughput sequencing (ChIP- seq). 368 genes were identified to be regulated by Fnr-1 via ChIP-chip, and 118 genes were identified via ChIP- seq.73 genes were overlapped between both methods. Results of this study suggest that Fnr-1 functions as a global regulator since controlled genes spanned a wide array of cellular functions. However, Fnr-1 activity is not critical to G. sulfurreducens metabolism since gene deletion has no effect on growth rates. Finally, the observed variation between ChIP-chip and ChIP-seq Fnr-1 binding profiles of this study has brought into question the methods currently used for genome-wide analysis of transcription regulator function