Microfluidic techniques for dynamic single-cell analysis

Dynamic single-cell analysis is a very important and frontier research field of single-cell analysis. Microfluidic techniques have become new and effective tools for precise, high-throughput, automatic analysis of single-cell dynamic process. This review aims to give an overview of dynamic single-cell analysis methods based on microfluidic platforms, with emphasis on the recent developments of microfluidic devices and its application to real-time dynamic monitoring of the signal molecules release from single living cell with temporal and spatial resolution, dynamic gene expression in single cells, the cell death dynamic events at the level of a single cell, and direct cell—cell communication between individual cell pairs.