Question: Why are plants and insects not compatible with the Chromium Nuclei Isolation Kit?
Answer:
- Plant nuclei are vastly different from mammalian nuclei. Plant nuclei have a wide range of sizes and debris (very small to very large), making nuclei isolation incompatible with size-based filtering techniques and the microfluidics within Chromium Chips. Nuclei isolation requirements will differ depending on the location sampled from the plant (i.e., root, stem, leaf, seed), so even if the nuclei isolation works for one plant type and one sampling location, the same technique may not be compatible with different plants or sampling locations. Therefore it's very hard to carry over a human-optimized protocol to plants as their nuclei and debris size are very different.
- Insects have exoskeletons that are incompatible with the Chromium Nuclei Isolation Kit. Calcified tissue types (i.e., bone) do not lyse well, so insect samples that contain chitin are unlikely to yield optimal results.
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