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Overview Of Cell Separation And Isolation

Overview Of Cell Separation And Isolation

Cell separation was first achieved in 1964 by S. H. Seal, who separated large tumor cells from the smaller blood cells using filtration. Two years later, Pohl and Hawk performed experiments on how cells respond differently to a nonuniform electric field based on the cell type. Such observations were the inception of cell separation methods, which allow isolating a single cell type from a heterogeneous sample.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 19, 2025

A Combinatorial Single-cell Approach to Characterize the Molecular and Immunophenotypic Heterogeneity of Human Stem and Progenitor Populations

A Combinatorial Single-cell Approach to Characterize the Molecular and Immunophenotypic Heterogeneity of Human Stem and Progenitor Populations

Published on: October 25, 2018

High-throughput, microscope-based sorting to dissect cellular heterogeneity.

Nicholas Hasle¹, Anthony Cooke², Sanjay Srivatsan¹

¹Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.

Molecular Systems Biology

|June 6, 2020

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Visual Cell Sorting isolates live cells by visual phenotype, linking cell appearance to genotype and gene expression. This method aids in identifying nuclear localization sequences and understanding cancer drug resistance.

Keywords:

genetic screening microscopy pharmacology subcellular localization transcriptomics

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Last Updated: Dec 19, 2025

A Combinatorial Single-cell Approach to Characterize the Molecular and Immunophenotypic Heterogeneity of Human Stem and Progenitor Populations

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Published on: November 10, 2023

Area of Science:

Cell Biology
Genomics
Biotechnology

Background:

Microscopy enables cellular phenotype characterization, but linking phenotypes to genotype or RNA expression at scale is difficult.
Existing methods face challenges in high-throughput analysis of visual cellular phenotypes and their underlying molecular states.

Purpose of the Study:

To introduce Visual Cell Sorting, a novel method for physically separating live cells based on visual phenotype.
To demonstrate the utility of Visual Cell Sorting in identifying functional genetic elements and understanding cellular responses to drugs.

Main Methods:

Visual Cell Sorting utilizes automated imaging and phenotypic analysis to selectively illuminate photoconvertible fluorescent protein (Dendra2) in live cells.
Photoactivated cells are isolated using fluorescence-activated cell sorting, enabling downstream molecular analysis.
The method was applied to assess nuclear localization sequence variants and analyze cells resistant to paclitaxel treatment.

Main Results:

Identified nuclear localization sequence variants that enhance nuclear localization, contributing to the annotation of thousands of human proteins.
Recovered cells with normal nuclear morphology after paclitaxel treatment and performed single-cell transcriptomics.
Identified pathways associated with paclitaxel resistance in cancer cells.

Conclusions:

Visual Cell Sorting is a cost-effective and accessible method for linking visual cellular phenotypes to genotypes and gene expression programs.
This technique facilitates large-scale discovery in cell biology, genomics, and drug discovery.
The method enables the uncovering of relationships between cellular morphology and internal biological states.