Imperial College London
Alternate

Professor Molly Stevens

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Materials

Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6804m.stevens

 
 
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Location

 

208Royal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Higgins:2017:10.1126/science.aan0228,
author = {Higgins, SG and Stevens, MM},
doi = {10.1126/science.aan0228},
journal = {SCIENCE},
pages = {379--380},
title = {Extracting the contents of living cells},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aan0228},
volume = {356},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Being able to monitor cells at different times is key to tracking fundamental cellular processes such as differentiation and cellular senescence, as well as disease progression and the effectiveness of drugs. However, most approaches are destructive and involve lysing the cells. Different time points can be studied by using parallel cell cultures, but the inferred changes could also be the result of cell heterogeneity (1, 2). Techniques for extracting small quantities of the cytosol for long-term tracking of a single cell's response must manipulate picoliter-scale volumes, maintain high cell viability, and give an accurate reflection of the cell's multiple biological components, as well as avoid influencing the ongoing development of the cell (see the figure) (1, 3). Cao et al. approached this problem by culturing cells on top of a random arrangement of hollow cylinders, which they call nanostraws (2). These 150-nm-diameter alumina tubes can sample 5 to 10% of proteins, messenger RNA (mRNA), and small molecules from the cells but only reduce cell viability by ∼5%. Their approach allows intracellular sampling and characterization at multiple time points from the same cells to track changes.
AU  - Higgins,SG
AU  - Stevens,MM
DO  - 10.1126/science.aan0228
EP  - 380
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 0036-8075
SP  - 379
TI  - Extracting the contents of living cells
T2  - SCIENCE
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aan0228
UR  - http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000400143000032&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/48669
VL  - 356
ER  -
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