Simultaneous measurement of biochemical phenotypes and gene expression in single cells

ABSTRACT Methods: to measure heterogeneity among cells are rapidly transforming our understanding of biology but are currently limited to molecular abundance measurements. We developed an approach to simultaneously measure biochemical activities and mRNA abundance in single cells to understand the heterogeneity of DNA repair activities across thousands of human lymphocytes, identifying known and novel cell-type-specific DNA repair phenotypes. Our approach provides a general framework for understanding functional heterogeneity among single cells.