New Paper in PNAS reports on superfast single cell functional analyses of microbiome members

In close collaboration with the Cheng group in Boston, several DOME members developed a combination of two-photon fluorescence with Stimulated Raman Spectroscopy (SRS) for coupling FISH with single cell isotope probing. They successfully applied this high-throughput technique to investigate mucosal sugar degradation by human gut microbiome members and unexpectedly revealed that Clostridia can outperform Bacteroidales at foraging fucose.

With this new technique imaging and quantification of isotope incorporation of FISH-identified cells in complex samples is 2-3 orders of magnitude faster than with other state of the art methods. Excitingly, the unique instrument used for these experiments is currently assembled at DOME and will very soon be available for functional microbiome analyses at our centre.