Stool samples sorted with microfluidics technique to isolate out individual cells.. Tobey-microfluidics

A droplet microfluidic method was used to target and sort individual uncharacterized bacterial cells with single-cell resolution directly from stool samples containing a complex microbiome, and a method to prepare the selected cells for bulk whole genome sequencing without cultivation. We characterize the power of this approach by recovering Bacillus subtilis spiked into human stool samples at a ratio as low as 1:250 and by successfully enriching endogenous Bacteroides vulgatus to the level required for de-novo assembly of high quality whole genomes.