Contactless (lossless??) proteomics sample prep by levitation!

If me embedding it above didn't work, this is the link for the video. 

And this is the link to the details! 

I've said this before and I'll keep saying it -- Single cell proteomics might be most important right now because it is our field's moonshot. 

We're getting 1) attention 2) a desperately needed influx of new informatics for dealing with high n samples and 3) innovation from all fronts that are questioning how we do everything.

It doesn't matter how you are prepping ultralow level samples right now. You are getting losses. Everyone is trying hard to minimize them, but peptides stick to things. Picoliter robotics like the CellenOne preps and NanoPots and nPoP etc., are all reducing them the best they can, but you are still touching things and peptides stick to those things. 

What if you could prep your samples without touching anything at all?!?!? 

This group isn't touching things. They levitate their samples -- including single cells -- in space with acoustic fields and lyse, digest, and transfer them without physical contact. 

What are the improvements versus basically exactly how we prep our single cells here? It looks like a 30% reduction in loss at the peptide and protein level. I guess the inverse is more clear. 30% more peptides!!

You can read a short preprint about this ridiculously cool technique here. Did I already extend a collaboration offer? Hell yes I did. I know exacty what I would do with 30% more peptide signal!!