Abstract

Nanoscale Electrokinetics Empowers Mechano Phenotyping of Single Cells

Hirofumi Shintaku, Professor, Institute for Life and Medical Sciences, Kyoto University

Nanopore electroporation uses nanostructures to create focused electric fields, which form pores in lipid bilayers of living cells with low invasiveness. We introduce ELASTomics, an approach that parallelly profile cell surface tension and gene expression of thousands of single cells leveraging nanopore electroporation and single-cell RNA-sequencing. We show that our system dissects the heterogeneity in cellular mechanics and uncovers the transcriptomic regulatory mechanism in cancer malignancy, cell differentiation, and cellular senescence.