Turning single cells into microarrays by super-resolution barcoding

In this review, we discuss a strategy to bring genomics and proteomics into single cells by super-resolution microscopy. The basis for this new approach are the following: given the 10 nm resolution of a super-resolution microscope and a typical cell with a size of (10 mu m)(3), individual cells contain effectively 10(9) super-resolution pixels or bits of information. Most eukaryotic cells have 10(4) genes and cellular abundances of 10-100 copies per transcript. Thus, under a super-resolution microscope, an individual cell has 1000 times more pixel volume or information capacities than is needed to encode all transcripts within that cell. Individual species of mRNA can be uniquely identified by labeling them each with a distinct combination of fluorophores by fluorescence in situ hybridization. With at least 15 fluorophores available in super-resolution, hundreds of genes in can be barcoded with a three-color barcode (C-3(15) = 455). These calculations suggest that by combining super-resolution microscopy and barcode labeling, single cells can be turned into informatics platforms denser than microarrays and that molecular species in individual cells can be profiled in a massively parallel fashion.