Sure, single-cell sorting devices are cool and useful and all, but Harold Craighead’s lab at the Cornell University Department of Biomedical Engineering is developing a microfluidic device that can separate individual methylated DNA fragments from a single cell’s total genetic content. In a lab test reported in their recent open-access paper (pdf) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team used the device to separate methylated plasmids from among 11 femtograms of mixed DNA, hitting a 5.6 percent false-positive rate and 3.5-fold enrichment. That level of enrichment is typical of immunoprecipitation methods that need about 1,000 times as much input DNA. I spoke to Craighead last week to ask him a little more about the device and its … Continue reading →