Dr. Szeto and co-authors from MIT published an article in today's Nature Communications that details a new microfluidics device for reconstructing the lineage and single-cell transcriptional profiles of dividing cells. As cells divide, the platform enables direct visualization and live capture of divided cells, and information about their relationships to each other (e.g., cousins vs. sisters vs. unrelated).
The new method is widely applicable to investigating the diversification of function for any cell type that divides, providing a window into the fundamental mechanisms of inheritance that may dictate cell fate and function. This is particularly important for adaptive immune cells such as T and B cells, where one genetically unique founder cell gives rise to many cells with highly diversified functions.
In addition to finding preliminary evidence of family-specific transcriptional functions in primary CD8+ T cells, the study provides a multivariate model of transcripts that were highly predictive of cell "age" or time since last division, and that this profile was significantly different in a leukemia cell line.
