Single cell analyses
Sperm Seq
30/07/12 12:51 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Stephen Quake at Stanford University and his colleagues reported the first genetic comparison of 91 single sperm cells using a microfluidic chip and found that some of the cells had recombined in unexpected places. This recombination contributes to the genetic diversity between siblings, and this methodology might be used to diagnose male fertility, select eggs for in vitro fertilization, and identify mutated genes in individual cancer cells. S. Pelech points out that the ability to sequence genomes in single haploid cells provides the unique opportunity to examine the actual clustering of specific mutations on the very same protein and explore the possibilities of synergistic and antagonistic mutations. Read More...