BARRACUDA microfluidic chip traps a million single cells to map gene circuit design space at scale
NikoMcCarty · x · 2026-10-15
A Harvard Medical School team unveiled BARRACUDA, a high-throughput platform combining a microfluidic chip that traps 1 million single-cell lineages with combinatorial assembly, time-lapse imaging, and optical pooled screening—sampling tens of thousands of circuit designs per experiment.
- Key trick: each gene circuit carries a short DNA barcode; in situ sequencing inside the chip reveals which design each cell received
- Workflow: instead of iterative design-build-fail cycles, researchers build a million variants in one tube, see which work, and pull out winning cells with optical tweezers
- Validation: the team probed robust adaptation in negative-integral-feedback circuits, screening de novo binders that reduced host stress; 20,000+ variants mapped distinct regulation regimes
- Why it matters: a scalable way to test synthetic biology designs (and possibly metabolic pathways), and a strong data source for predictive AI models
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