Sorting cells by Raman fingerprint

Label-free, noninvasive, rapid and cost-efficient: combining Raman spectroscopy with high-throughput flow cytometry reveals the metabolic performance of individual cells of a population in their natural context.

Cellular metabolism supports pivotal processes: from microbial carbon and nitrogen cycling, to crop production for food and energy homeostasis, to cancer progression. Although powerful, traditional bulk metabolomic approaches obscure the heterogeneity inherent in cell populations, masking rare but functionally significant subpopulations. Single-cell sorting technologies have emerged to analyze this complexity and isolate cells with specific metabolic functions from a mixed population.

Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) has been a powerful workhorse for metabolic profiling and cell sorting for over half a century. However, FACS depends on predefined markers and labels, perturbing native cellular states and failing to capture the full spectrum of metabolic activity. In contrast, Raman-activated cell sorting (RACS) is a transformative label-free technology, combining the high-throughput capabilities of flow cytometry with the rich, vibrationally derived metabol

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