ACS2016 Single Cell Genomics: sorting the cultured and uncultivable – one cell at a time (24149)
Single cell genomics (SCG) recovers the hereditary information from the most basic units of biology and has become a complement to cultivation-based and microbial community-focused research approaches. SCG is particularly relevant in environmental microbiology, where most organisms are composed of individual cells and are difficult to cultivate, thus cannot be analyzed using traditional genomic approaches. Although only about a decade old, microbial SCG has enabled the recovery of genomic blueprints of many uncultured microbial groups, revealed unrecognized biogeochemical processes, and identified novel pathogenic and symbiotic interactions in situ. SCG has been instrumental in identifying metabolic features, evolutionary histories and inter-organismal interactions of the uncultured microbial groups that dominate many environments and biogeochemical cycles. Methods for SCG consist of a series of integrated processes (SCG pipeline), beginning with the collection and preservation of environmental samples, followed by physical separation, lysis and whole genome amplification of individual cells, and culminating in genomic sequencing and the interpretation of encoded biological features.