[Studies on single-cell analysis]

The single-cell analysis is a frontier field of sciences that has been developed from the interdisciplinary collaborations of analytical chemistry, biology and medicine. At the present time, the great achievements in the application of capillary electrophoresis and microfluidic chip to single-cell analysis, particularly, in the application of microfluidic chip to culture, manipulation, location, separation and detection of components of single cells, real-time detection of secretion from single-cells and high-throughput array detection have been made. The unit procedures can be made up in any device in accordance with the requirements. In this paper, the work of the author's group is presented mainly. In addition, the developments of the capillary electrophoresis and chip electrophoresis applied to single-cell analysis in recent years are reviewed. The prospects for single-cell analysis including capillary electrophoresis and microfluidic chip, measurement and control at the cell-chip interface, and quantum dots for probing live cells are also proposed.