Recent Progress in the Development of Droplet-based Microfluidic Technologies for Phenotypic Screening using Cell-cell Interactions

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Specific cell-cell interactions enable the complex metabolic tasks associated with natural microbial communities and facilitates their improved adaptation to environmental changes when compared to monocultures. Understanding these interactions can help resolve many of the underlying mechanisms regulating these complex microbial ecosystems and supply novel insights for various applications. However, the complexity of microbial interactions makes it difficult to evaluate them individually. However, droplet-based microfluidic methods can be used to compartmentalize individual responses to specific conditions in a massively parallel manner allowing for evaluations at a single-cell resolution. Moreover, individual droplets can be withdrawn from these systems without washing or dilution and can thus be used to determine the impact of specific substances used in intercellular interactions via further analysis such as next-generation sequencing or mass spectrometry. In this review, we summarized the recent progress around droplet-based microfluidic technologies for phenotypic characterization and screening using cell-cell interaction, which continues to diversify over time expanding its application to a variety of topics.