The size and fragility of cardiomyocytes have posed technical limitations for single-cell studies, particularly with distinguishing variation in gene expression. Traditional automation approaches such as multiplexing and nanodroplets are limited in their ability to determine transcriptional heterogeneity. In this webinar, Dr. Stefan Günther and Michail Yekelchyk from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research will discuss how the ICELL8 Single-Cell System, using nanowell technology, overcomes the challenges with handling mono- and multi-nucleated cardiomyocytes in their genomic research core lab. Their talk covers the high-throughput methods, analysis pipeline, and findings from their recent publication in Basic Research in Cardiology.

Webinar outline

In this webinar, Dr. Stefan Günther and Michail Yekelchyk will describe how they used the ICELL8 Single-Cell System to:

• Isolate intact rod-shaped cardiomyocytes from normal and hypertrophic hearts
• Distinguish between mono- and multi-nucleated cardiomyocytes
• Perform quality control of the isolated cells to avoid misinterpretation of sequencing data
• Generate RNA-seq libraries from hundreds of selected single cardiomyocytes and compare transcriptional signatures between mono- and multi-nucleated cardiomyocytes

About the presenters

Stefan Günther, PhD

Dr. Stefan Günther studied biology in Halle/Saale and finished his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim, Germany, in the group of Thomas Braun. Since 2015, he is Head of the NGS Core Facility at MPI Bad Nauheim and focuses on transcriptomic analyses as well as single-cell transcriptomics and epigenetics.

Michail Yekelchyk, PhD student

Michail Yekelchyk studied biophysics at Belarusian State University in Minsk from 2011–2016. Since 2016 he has been a PhD student in the department of Cardiac Development and Remodelling in the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim, Germany.