Gene-expression studies are typically carried out in the bulk by pooling cells, but analysis of cell-to-cell variation — which is of particular interest for rare circulating tumour cells — requires techniques that can characterize levels of expression in individual cells. This study demonstrates a new technique that enables rare cells to be isolated from whole blood based on target mRNA sequences. The study was highlied on the cover of Nature Chemistry’s May 2018 issue. The image depicts the mRNA-induced intracellular self-assembly of magnetic nanoparticles to form large magnetic clusters that enables the graded separation of individual cells based on their expression levels of the target mRNA. https://www.nature.com/nchem/volumes/10/issues/5
