Fluidigm Europe has launched a customer technical poster entitled 'Comprehensive profiling of microRNAs in murine hematopoietic stem cells using a microfluidics approach'.
The poster reports on the work of researchers at the BC Cancer Agency and University of British Columbia.
It describes how microfluidic technologies were combined with a 288-plex real time PCR approach, allowing the detection of 288 miRNAs in small numbers (around 3000) of cells.
The poster describes how over 20 unique murine hematopoietic cell populations were isolated through FACS sorting, including hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), myeloid and lymphoid progenitor cells and mature lineage populations.
Several thousand nanolitre volume quantitative PCR reactions were performed using Fluidigm BioMark 48.48 Dynamic Arrays and miRNA specific TaqMan probes.
For each miRNA, synthetic miRNA standards were used to determine the absolute number of miRNA molecules per cell.
133 of the 288 miRNAs tested were detected across all cell populations.
The researchers conclude that Fluidigm's dynamic array provides a rapid, sensitive and cost-effective method for miRNA profiling in rare cell populations.
The sensitivity of Fluidigm's dynamic array is shown to detect heterogeneity in miRNA expression at the single cell level in purified populations.
Fluidigm's 48.48 Dynamic Array is capable of performing 2,304 simultaneous real-time PCR experiments running gold-standard TaqMan assays in nanolitre quantities.
