Recent advances in the development of single cell analysis—A review

• Single cell analysis importance stems from revealing developmental or environmental changes in single cell chemical content.
• Miniaturized capillary or microfluidic devices provide a suitable environment for cell chemical content analysis.
• Such devices integrate single-cell injection, cell lysis, component separation, fluorescence, electrochemical or MS detection.
• Large colonies could be analyzed cell by cell, allowing determination of variations in the distribution of many analytes.

Development of techniques for the analysis of the content of individual cells represents an important direction in modern bioanalytical chemistry. While the analysis of chromosomes, organelles, or location of selected proteins has been traditionally the domain of microscopic techniques, the advances in miniaturized analytical systems bring new possibilities for separations and detections of molecules inside the individual cells including smaller molecules such as hormones or metabolites. It should be stressed that the field of single cell analysis is very broad, covering advanced optical, electrochemical and mass spectrometry instrumentation, sensor technology and separation techniques. The number of papers published on single cell analysis has reached several hundred in recent years. Thus a complete literature coverage is beyond the limits of a journal article. The following text provides a critical overview of some of the latest developments with the main focus on mass spectrometry, microseparation methods, electrophoresis in capillaries and microfluidic devices and respective detection techniques for performing single cell analyses.

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