SLAS Technology April Issue Available Now

Oak Brook, IL (April 19, 2022) – The April issues of SLAS Technology is now available Open Access on ScienceDirect.

Single-cell transcriptomics (scRNA-seq) has the potential to be an enormously useful tool in producing the transcriptomes of thousands of cells from a heterogenous sample at once. Despite this fact, the adoption of the technique has been hampered by the high costs and long hands-on labor times. One of the major sources of this bottleneck is the preparation of the sequencing library. In their article, “Automation enables high-throughput and reproducible single-cell transcriptomics library preparation” Kind, et al, describe a new process that reduced the hands-on time for sequencing library preparation by more than 75% using the 10X Genomics Single Cell 3’ kit.

With technology rapidly advancing all the time, it can be easy to get overwhelmed when trying to determine which single cell sequencing technique is best to answer a particular research question. In their Review Article, “Complex biological questions being addressed using single cell sequencing technologies” Yu, et al, compiles the current single cell RNA sequencing technologies available by providing an overview of each technique, describing the pros and cons, and discussing what future developments may bring. Several biological questions are presented, as well as techniques that have been used to answer the questions in the past. The authors suggest where the technology for answering each question is going and provide a full breakdown of the suitable technologies currently available for answering questions related to cell atlas, lineage tracing, finding responsible cells, and spatial transcriptomics.

In addition to the two highlighted articles, the February issue of SLAS Technology includes the following works:

• Single cell analysis technologies in biomedical research
• Technologies bringing young Zebrafish from a niche field to the limelight
• Traceable impedance-based single-cell pipetting, from a research set-up to a robust and fast automated robot: DispenCell-S1
• Sorting single-cell microcarriers using commercial flow cytometers
• A new workflow combining magnetic cell separation and impedance-based cell dispensing for gentle, simple and reliable cloning of specific CD8+ T cells

Access to the February SLAS Technology issue is available at https://slas-technology.org/current.

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SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening) is an international professional society of academic, industry and government life sciences researchers and the developers and providers of laboratory automation technology. The SLAS mission is to bring together researchers in academia, industry, and government to advance life sciences discovery and technology via education, knowledge exchange and global community building.

SLAS Technology: Translating Life Sciences Innovation, 2021 Impact Factor 3.047. Editor-in-Chief Edward Kai-Hua Chow, Ph.D., National University of Singapore (Singapore).

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