Harnessing HetHydrogel: A Universal Platform to Dropletize Single-Cell Multiomics

A universal platform is developed for dropletizing single cell plate-based multiomic assays, consisting of three main pillars: a miniaturized open Heterogeneous Hydrogel reactor (abbreviated HetHydrogel) for multi-step biochemistry, its tunable permeability that allows Tn5 tagmentation, and single cell droplet barcoding. Through optimizing the HetHydrogel manufacturing procedure, the chemical composition, and cell permeation conditions, simultaneous high-throughput mitochondrial DNA genotyping and chromatin profiling at the single-cell level are demonstrated using a mixed-species experiment. This platform offers a powerful way to investigate the genotype-phenotype relationships of various mtDNA mutations in biological processes. The HetHydrogel platform is believed to have the potential to democratize droplet technologies, upgrading a whole range of plate-based single cell assays to high throughput format. A novel miniaturized reactor platform, HetHydrogel, is proposed for high-throughput single-cell encapsulation and massively parallel biochemical transformations. The HetHydrogel platform replicates the numerous advantages offered by microplates, such as accessibility for buffer exchange and reagent replenishment, physical compartmentalization for single-cell analysis, as well as biocompatibility with in vitro biochemical reactions. image