Question: Can GEMs be stored after the partitioning of single cells?
Answer: GEMs generated with GEM-X assays should be transferred from the microfluidic chip to strip tubes and capped. GEM-RT incubation should begin within 5 min of collecting GEMs. If multiple GEM-X chips are run back-to-back, place the GEMs from the subsequent chips in separate thermal cyclers.
GEMs generated with Next GEM low throughput, standard, or high throughput single cell assays should be transferred from the microfluidic chip to strip tubes, capped, and stored on ice for up to 1 hour before starting the GEM-RT incubation. Storage on ice for longer than 1 hour will likely result in degradation of the RNA and may lead to loss of single-cell RNA-seq behavior if the emulsions are compromised.
After the RT step samples can be stored at +4°C for up to 72 hours, or at −20°C for up to a week.
Significant performance degradation is to be expected if the GEM samples are left at room temperature for any amount of time since, once the GEMs are formed, the enzyme, primers and cellular RNA are mixed together with various trace nuclease and protease activities from the cell lysates.
Products: Single Cell Gene Expression, Single Cell Immune Profiling