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BACKGROUND: Changes in the oxidative stress and lipid metabolism (OSLM) pathways play important roles in polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) pathogenesis and development. Consequently, a systematic analysis of genes related to OSLM was conducted to identify molecular clusters and explore new biomarkers that are helpful for the diagnostic of PCOS. METHODS: Gene expression and clinical data from 22 PCOS women and 14 normal women were obtained from the GEO database (GSE34526, GSE95728, and GSE106724). Consensus clustering identified OSLM-related molecular clusters, and WGCNA revealed co-expression patterns. The immune microenvironment was quantitatively assessed utilizing the CIBERSORT algorithm. Multiple machine learning models and connectivity map analyses were subsequently applied to explore potential biomarkers for PCOS, and nomograms were employed to develop a predictive multigene model of PCOS. Finally, the OSLM status of PCOS and the hub genes expression profiles were preliminarily verified using TUNEL, qRTâPCR, western blot, and IHC assays in a PCOS mouse model. RESULTS: 19 differential expression genes (DEGs) related to OSLM were identified. Based on 19 DEGs that were strongly influenced by OSLM, PCOS patients were stratified into two distinct clusters, designated Cluster 1 and Cluster 2. Distinct differences in the immune cell proportions existed in normal and two PCOS clusters. The random forest showed the best results, with the least cross-entropy and the utmost AUC (cross-entropy: 0.111 AUC: 0.960). Among the 19 OSLM-related genes, CXCR1, ACP5, CEACAM3, S1PR4, and TCF7 were identified by a Bayesian network and had a good fit with PCOS disease risk by the nomogram (AUC: 0.990 CI: 0.968-1.000). TUNEL assays revealed more severe DNA damage within the ovarian granule cells of PCOS mice than in those of normal mice (P < 0.001). The RNA and protein expression levels of the five hub genes were significantly elevated in PCOS mice, which was consistent with the results of the bioinformatics analyses. CONCLUSION: A novel predictive model was constructed for PCOS patients and five hub genes were identified as potential biomarkers to offer novel insights into clinical diagnostic strategies for PCOS.
Subject(s)
Lipid Metabolism , Oxidative Stress , Polycystic Ovary Syndrome , Polycystic Ovary Syndrome/genetics , Polycystic Ovary Syndrome/immunology , Polycystic Ovary Syndrome/metabolism , Polycystic Ovary Syndrome/pathology , Female , Humans , Lipid Metabolism/genetics , Oxidative Stress/genetics , Mice , Animals , Gene Expression Profiling , Gene Regulatory Networks , Gene Expression Regulation , Biomarkers/metabolism , Disease Models, Animal , NomogramsABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Dysregulation of RNA guanine-7 methyltransferase (RNMT) plays a crucial role in the tumor progression and immune responses. However, the detailed role of RNMT in pan-cancer is still unknown. METHODS: Bulk transcriptomic data of pan-cancer were obtained from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx), and Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) databases. Single-cell transcriptomic and proteomics data of lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) were analyzed in the Tumor Immune Single-cell Hub 2 (TISCH2) and Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) databases, respectively. The correlation between RNMT expression and cancer prognosis was analyzed by Cox proportional hazards regression and Kaplan-Meier analyses. The correlation of RNMT expression with common immunoregulators, tumor mutation burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI), mismatch repair (MMR), and DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) was analyzed. Additionally, the correlation between RNMT expression and immune infiltration level was evaluated. A total of 1287 machine learning combinations were used to construct prognostic models for LUSC. qRT-PCR and Western blot were used to validate the bioinformatics findings of RNMT upregulation in LUSC. RESULTS: RNMT was widely expressed across different cancers, with significant correlation to prognosis in cancers such as kidney chromophobe (KICH) (p = 0.0033, HR = 7.12), liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC) (p = 0.01, HR = 1.41), and others. Notably, RNMT participates in the regulation of the tumor microenvironment. RNMT expression positively correlated with immune cell expression (Spearman's rank correlation, p < 0.05). Moreover, RNMT expression was strongly associated with immunoregulators, TMB, MSI, MMR, and DNMT in most cancer types. Notably, RNMT expression displayed excellent prognostic and immunological performance in LUSC. The expression of RNMT was mainly enriched in B cells of LUSC tissues. qRT-PCR and Western blot verified the high expression of RNMT in LUSC. CONCLUSION: RNMT expression widely correlated with prognosis and immune infiltration in various tumors, especially LUSC. The RNMT detection may provide a new idea for future tumor immune studies and treatment strategies.
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BACKGROUND & AIMS: Previous studies have reported an inconsistent relationship between overactive bladder (OAB) and the consumption of tea, coffee, and caffeine. Our study aims to determine these associations in a large and nationally representative adult sample. METHODS: This cross-sectional study included 15,379 participants from the 2005-2018 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database. The outcome was the risk of wet OAB that was diagnosed when the OAB symptom score was ≥3 with urgent urinary incontinence and excluded other diseases affecting diagnosis. The exposures were the consumption of tea, coffee, and caffeine. Weighted logistic regression models were established to explore these associations by calculating odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI), as did restricted cubic splines (RCS) used to analyze the nonlinear associations. RESULT: Of all the participants (n = 15,379), 2207 had wet OAB. Mean [SE] consumption of tea, total coffee, caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and caffeine was 233.6 [15.7] g/day, 364.3 [15.5] g/day, 301.6 [14.9] g/day, 62.7 [7.9] g/day, 175.5 [6.6] mg/day in participants with wet OAB, respectively. In the fully adjusted model, compared to those without tea consumption, the high consumption of tea (>481 g/day) was associated with an increased risk of wet OAB (OR: 1.29; 95%CI: 1.01-1.64). Low decaffeinated coffee (0.001-177.6 g/day) had a negative association with the risk (OR: 0.66; 95%CI: 0.49-0.90). In the RCS analysis, tea consumption showed a positive linear association with the risk of wet OAB, and decaffeinated coffee showed a nonlinear relationship with the risk and had a turning point of 78 g/day in the U-shaped curve between 0 and 285 g/day. Besides, total coffee, caffeinated coffee, and caffeine consumption had no significant association with the risk. Interestingly, in the high tea consumption, participants with high total coffee consumption [>527.35 g/day, OR and 95%CI: 2.14(1.16-3.94)] and low caffeine consumption [0.1-74.0 mg/day, OR and 95%CI: 1.50(1.03-2.17)] were positively associated with the risk of wet OAB. CONCLUSION: High tea consumption was associated with the increased risk of wet OAB, especially intake together with high total coffee and low caffeine consumption, but no significant association with the single consumption of total coffee and caffeine. Low decaffeinated coffee was associated with a decreased risk of wet OAB. It is necessary to control tea intake when managing the liquid intake of wet OAB patients.
Subject(s)
Caffeine , Coffee , Nutrition Surveys , Tea , Urinary Bladder, Overactive , Humans , Coffee/adverse effects , Tea/adverse effects , Female , Male , Urinary Bladder, Overactive/epidemiology , Caffeine/adverse effects , Caffeine/administration & dosage , Cross-Sectional Studies , Adult , Middle Aged , United States/epidemiology , Aged , Risk Factors , Young AdultABSTRACT
Automated tuning can significantly improve productivity and save the costs of manual operation in the microwave filter manufacturing industry. This article proposes a mathematical model of scattering data optimization to find the accurate coupling matrix for multiple-version microwave filters, a core step of automated microwave filter tuning. For the large-scale problem of coupling coefficient combination, we propose a decision set decomposition strategy that evenly divides the entire frequency interval into several subintervals according to the correlation between scattering data. With this strategy, we design a microscale (small-size subsets of the decomposed decision set) searching algorithm, which solves each suboptimization problem by searching the decision subset instead of the entire decision set. To verify the validity of the proposed algorithm for multiple-version microwave filters, experiments are conducted on three versions of microwave filters from a real-world production line, including the two-port eighth-order, ninth-order, and tenth-order microwave filters. Experimental results show that the proposed model is feasible within the industrial error for the multiversion microwave filter tuning problem. Besides, the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art optimization algorithms in the coupling matrix optimization problem.
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[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.906979.].
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The importance of the microbiome is increasingly prominent. For example, the human microbiome has been proven to be strongly associated with health conditions, while the environmental microbiome is recognized to have a profound influence on agriculture and even the global climate. Furthermore, the microbiome can serve as a fascinating reservoir of genes that encode tremendously valuable compounds for industrial and medical applications. In the past decades, various technologies have been developed to better understand and exploit the microbiome. In particular, microfluidics has demonstrated its strength and prominence in the microbiome research. By taking advantage of microfluidic technologies, inherited shortcomings of traditional methods such as low throughput, labor-consuming, and high-cost are being compensated or bypassed. In this review, we will summarize a broad spectrum of microfluidic technologies that have addressed various needs in the field of microbiome research, as well as the achievements that were enabled by the microfluidics (or technological advances). Finally, how microfluidics overcomes the limitations of conventional methods by technology integration will also be discussed.
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Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of global mortality. Therapy of CVDs is still a great challenge since many advanced therapies have been developed. Multiple cell types produce nano-sized extracellular vesicles (EVs), including cardiovascular system-related cells and stem cells. Compelling evidence reveals that EVs are associated with the pathophysiological processes of CVDs. Recently researches focus on the clinical transformation in EVs-based diagnosis, prognosis, therapies, and drug delivery systems. In this review, we firstly discuss the current knowledge about the biophysical properties and biological components of EVs. Secondly, we will focus on the functions of EVs on CVDs, and outline the latest advances of EVs as prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers, and therapeutic agents. Finally, we will introduce the specific application of EVs as a novel drug delivery system and its application in CVDs therapy. Specific attention will be paid to summarize the perspectives, challenges, and applications on EVs' clinical and industrial transformation.
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A fastest full Mueller matrix polarimeter, to the best of our knowledge, based on optical time-stretch has been proposed and demonstrated. Thanks to the time-stretch-based ultrafast spectra detection mechanism, its measurement time could reach 10â ns. Additionally, a novel, to the best of aour knowledge, simpler method to estimate its main systematic error has been proposed and verified. With the proposed method, static measurement of polarizer and wave plate is executed with a maximum coefficient error of below 0.1. Dynamic measurement of a free space electro-optic modulator as fast-changing phase retardation has also been executed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system.
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Bacterial pathogens operate by tightly controlling the pathogenicity to facilitate invasion and survival in host. While small molecule inducers can be designed to modulate pathogenicity to perform studies of pathogen-host interaction, these approaches, due to the diffusion property of chemicals, may have unintended, or pleiotropic effects that can impose limitations on their use. By contrast, light provides superior spatial and temporal resolution. Here, using optogenetics we reengineered GacS of the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, signal transduction protein of the global regulatory Gac/Rsm cascade which is of central importance for the regulation of infection factors. The resultant protein (termed YGS24) displayed significant light-dependent activity of GacS kinases in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. When introduced in the Caenorhabditis elegans host systems, YGS24 stimulated the pathogenicity of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain PAO1 in a brain-heart infusion and of another strain, PA14, in slow killing media progressively upon blue-light exposure. This optogenetic system provides an accessible way to spatiotemporally control bacterial pathogenicity in defined hosts, even specific tissues, to develop new pathogenesis systems, which may in turn expedite development of innovative therapeutics.
Subject(s)
Bacterial Proteins/metabolism , Caenorhabditis elegans/microbiology , Optogenetics/methods , Protein Kinases/metabolism , Pseudomonas aeruginosa/metabolism , Pseudomonas aeruginosa/pathogenicity , Signal Transduction/genetics , Transcription Factors/metabolism , Virulence Factors/metabolism , Animals , Bacterial Proteins/genetics , Host-Pathogen Interactions/genetics , Light , Microorganisms, Genetically-Modified , Protein Engineering/methods , Protein Kinases/genetics , Pseudomonas aeruginosa/genetics , Signal Transduction/radiation effects , Transcription Factors/genetics , Virulence/genetics , Virulence/radiation effects , Virulence Factors/geneticsABSTRACT
Optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) monitoring is one of the core tasks of advanced optical performance monitoring (OPM) technology, which plays an essential role in future intelligent optical communication networks. In contrast to many regression-based methods, we convert the continuous OSNR monitoring into a classification problem by restricting the outputs of the neural network-based classifier to discrete OSNR intervals. We also use a low-bandwidth coherent receiver for obtaining the time domain samples and a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network as the chromatic dispersion-resistant classifier. The proposed scheme is cost efficient and compatible with our previously proposed multi-purpose OPM platform. Both simulation and experimental verification show that the proposed OSNR monitoring technique achieves high classification accuracy and robustness with low computational complexity.
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The human gut is important for food digestion and absorption, as well as a venue for a large number of microorganisms that coexist with the host. Although numerous in vitro models have been proposed to study intestinal pathology or interactions between intestinal microbes and host, they are far from recapitulating the real intestinal microenvironment in vivo. To assist researchers in further understanding gut physiology, the intestinal microbiome, and disease processes, a novel technology primarily based on microfluidics and cell biology, called "gut-on-chip," was developed to simulate the structure, function, and microenvironment of the human gut. In this review, we first introduce various types of gut-on-chip systems, then highlight their applications in drug pharmacokinetics, host-gut microbiota crosstalk, and nutrition metabolism. Finally, we discuss challenges in this field and prospects for better understanding interactions between intestinal flora and human hosts, and then provide guidance for clinical treatment of related diseases.
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Bacterial therapy, which presents a smart platform for delivering and producing therapeutic agents, as monotherapy or in combination with other therapeutic modes, has provided a breakthrough for the treatment of a range of diseases. The integration of synthetic biology technology with bacteria enables their characteristics like chemotaxis and biomolecule secretion to outperform conventional diagnostics and therapeutics, thereby facilitating their clinical applications in a range of diseases. Compared to injection-administered bacteria, orally-delivered bacteria improve patient compliance while avoiding the risk of systemic infections. However, oral administration of microbes always leads to a substantial loss of viability due to the highly acidic environment in the stomach and bile salt in the intestine. Thus, the formulation of these bacteria into microcapsules using appropriate biomaterials is a promising approach for reducing cell death during gastrointestinal passage and controlling the release of these therapeutic cells across the intestinal tract. In this review, we reveal the basic principles of oral bacterial delivery, from internal genetic engineering approaches to external encapsulation and modification, and summarize the most recent biomedical applications. Finally, we discuss future trends in oral bacterial therapy as well as current challenges that need to be resolved to advance their clinical applications.
Subject(s)
Bacteria , Synthetic Biology , Administration, Oral , Capsules , Gastrointestinal Tract , HumansABSTRACT
Culture and screening of gut bacteria enable testing of microbial function and therapeutic potential. However, the diversity of human gut microbial communities (microbiota) impedes comprehensive experimental studies of individual bacterial taxa. Here, we combine advances in droplet microfluidics and high-throughput DNA sequencing to develop a platform for separating and assaying growth of microbiota members in picoliter droplets (MicDrop). MicDrop enabled us to cultivate 2.8 times more bacterial taxa than typical batch culture methods. We then used MicDrop to test whether individuals possess similar abundances of carbohydrate-degrading gut bacteria, using an approach which had previously not been possible due to throughput limitations of traditional bacterial culture techniques. Single MicDrop experiments allowed us to characterize carbohydrate utilization among dozens of gut bacterial taxa from distinct human stool samples. Our aggregate data across nine healthy stool donors revealed that all of the individuals harbored gut bacterial species capable of degrading common dietary polysaccharides. However, the levels of richness and abundance of polysaccharide-degrading species relative to monosaccharide-consuming taxa differed by up to 2.6-fold and 24.7-fold, respectively. Additionally, our unique dataset suggested that gut bacterial taxa may be broadly categorized by whether they can grow on single or multiple polysaccharides, and we found that this lifestyle trait is correlated with how broadly bacterial taxa can be found across individuals. This demonstration shows that it is feasible to measure the function of hundreds of bacterial taxa across multiple fecal samples from different people, which should in turn enable future efforts to design microbiota-directed therapies and yield new insights into microbiota ecology and evolution.IMPORTANCE Bacterial culture and assay are components of basic microbiological research, drug development, and diagnostic screening. However, community diversity can make it challenging to comprehensively perform experiments involving individual microbiota members. Here, we present a new microfluidic culture platform that makes it feasible to measure the growth and function of microbiota constituents in a single set of experiments. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate how the platform can be used to measure how hundreds of gut bacterial taxa drawn from different people metabolize dietary carbohydrates. Going forward, we expect this microfluidic technique to be adaptable to a range of other microbial assay needs.
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Pseudomonas phages PaGz-1 and PaZq-1, two new phages infecting Pseudomonas aeruginosa, were isolated from fresh water in Guangdong province, China. The genomes of these two phages consist of 93,975 bp and 94,315 bp and contain 175 and 172 open reading frames (ORFs), respectively. The genome sequences of PaGz-1 and PaZq-1 share 95.8% identity with a query coverage of 94%, suggesting that these two phages belong to two different species. Based on results of nucleotide sequence alignment, gene annotation, and phylogenetic analysis, we propose PaGz-1 and PaZq-1 as representative isolates of two species in the genus Pakpunavirus within the family Myoviridae.
Subject(s)
Genome, Viral , Myoviridae/genetics , Open Reading Frames , Phylogeny , Pseudomonas Phages/genetics , Pseudomonas aeruginosa/virology , Base Sequence , China , Fresh Water/microbiology , Gene Ontology , Molecular Sequence Annotation , Myoviridae/classification , Myoviridae/isolation & purification , Pseudomonas Phages/classification , Pseudomonas Phages/isolation & purification , Pseudomonas aeruginosa/isolation & purification , Sequence Alignment , Whole Genome SequencingABSTRACT
Vibrio is one of the most detrimental agents of shrimp premature death syndrome. Phage therapy for prevention and treatment of Vibrio infections has attracted increasing attentions due to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial variants. Here, we describe a workflow of preparing a phage cocktail against Vibrio infections for practical applications. Twenty Vibrio strains were isolated from the gut of diseased shrimp and aquaculture wastewater, and five of them were identified as pathogens causing shrimp vibriosis. Twenty-two lytic phages were then isolated using the above five pathogens as hosts, and five of them showed broad host ranges and high lytic capability against the Vibrio strains. Whole genomic sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of the five phages indicated that they are novel and belong to the Siphoviridae family. The phage cocktail consisting of these five phages showed higher efficiency in inhibiting the growth of pathogenic Vibrio sp. Va-F3 than any single phage in vitro. We then evaluated the performance of the phage cocktail in protecting shrimp against Vibrio sp. Va-F3 infections in situ. The results showed that shrimp survival rates could reach 91.4 and 91.6% in 7 days, for the cocktail-treated and the antibiotic-treated groups, respectively. By contrast, the shrimp survival rate of the group without any treatment was only 20.0%. Overall, this study describes a general workflow of how to prepare a phage cocktail and apply it in controlling bacterial infections in the shrimp aquaculture. Knowledge gained from this study will not only help fight against the shrimp vibriosis in practical but also facilitate the design of phage cocktails with a satisfying performance in controlling other animal diseases in aquaculture.
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Small-scale production of biologics has great potential for enhancing the accessibility of biomanufacturing. By exploiting cell-material feedback, we have designed a concise platform to achieve versatile production, analysis and purification of diverse proteins and protein complexes. The core of our technology is a microbial swarmbot, which consists of a stimulus-sensitive polymeric microcapsule encapsulating engineered bacteria. By sensing the confinement, the bacteria undergo programmed partial lysis at a high local density. Conversely, the encapsulating material shrinks responding to the changing chemical environment caused by cell growth, squeezing out the protein products released by bacterial lysis. This platform is then integrated with downstream modules to enable quantification of enzymatic kinetics, purification of diverse proteins, quantitative control of protein interactions and assembly of functional protein complexes and multienzyme metabolic pathways. Our work demonstrates the use of the cell-material feedback to engineer a modular and flexible platform with sophisticated yet well-defined programmed functions.
Subject(s)
Bacterial Proteins/metabolism , Bioengineering , Escherichia coli/metabolism , Bacterial Proteins/genetics , Bioreactors , Gene Expression Regulation , Genetic Engineering , PlasmidsABSTRACT
Conventional techniques to synchronize bacterial cells often require manual manipulations and lengthy incubation lacking precise temporal control. An automated microfluidic device was recently developed to overcome these limitations. However, it exploits the stalk property of Caulobacter crescentus that undergoes asymmetric stalked and swarmer cell cycle stages and is therefore restricted to this species. To address this shortcoming, we have engineered Escherichia coli cells to adhere to microchannel walls via a synthetic and inducible "stalk". The pole of E. coli is capped by magnetic fluorescent nanoparticles via a polar-localized outer membrane protein. A mass of cells is immobilized in a microfluidic chamber by an externally applied magnetic field. Daughter cells are formed without the induced stalk and hence are flushed out, yielding a synchronous population of "baby" cells. The stalks can be tracked by GFP and nanoparticle fluorescence; no fluorescence signal is detected in the eluted cell population, indicating that it consists solely of daughters. The collected daughter cells display superb synchrony. The results demonstrate a new on-chip method to synchronize the model bacterium E. coli and likely other bacterial species, and also foster the application of synthetic biology to the study of the bacterial cell cycle.
Subject(s)
Escherichia coli/growth & development , Magnetite Nanoparticles/chemistry , Synthetic Biology/methods , Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins/genetics , Green Fluorescent Proteins/genetics , Lab-On-A-Chip Devices , Magnetic Fields , Microscopy, Interference , Plasmids/genetics , Plasmids/metabolism , Synthetic Biology/instrumentationABSTRACT
AsXd-1, a bacteriophage that infects Aeromonas salmonicida, was isolated from the wastewater of a seafood market in Shenzhen, China. The 39,014-bp genome of this phage contains 52 open reading frames (ORFs), 30 of which were found to be homologous to reference sequences that putatively encode functional phage proteins. Nine out of the remaining 22 ORFs with unknown functions were unique to AsXd-1. Gene annotation suggests that AsXd-1 has both lysogenic and lytic life cycles. Furthermore, both phylogenetic analysis based on the large subunit of terminase and genome sequence comparisons show that AsXd-1 is closely related to phages belonging to the genus Hk97virus. We thus propose AsXd-1 as a new member of the genus Hk97virus within the family Siphoviridae.
Subject(s)
Aeromonas/virology , Bacteriophages/genetics , Bacteriophages/isolation & purification , Genome, Viral , Siphoviridae/classification , Siphoviridae/isolation & purification , Bacteriophages/classification , Base Sequence , China , Molecular Sequence Data , Open Reading Frames , Phylogeny , Sequence Analysis, DNA , Siphoviridae/genetics , Viral Proteins/geneticsABSTRACT
Soft nano- or microgels made by natural or synthetic polymers have been investigated intensively because of their board applications. Due to their porosity and biocompatibility, nano- or microgels can be integrated with various biologics to form a bio-hybrid system. They can support living cells as a scaffold; entrap bioactive molecules as a drug carrier or encapsulate microorganisms as a semi-permeable membrane. Especially, researchers have created various modes of functional dynamics into these bio-hybrid systems. From one side, the encapsulating materials can respond to the external stimulus and release the cargo. From the other side, cells can respond to physical, or chemical properties of the matrix and differentiate into a specific cell type. With recent advancements of synthetic biology, cells can be further programed to respond to certain signals, and express therapeutics or other functional proteins for various purposes. Thus, the integration of nano- or microgels and programed cells becomes a potential candidate in applications spanning from biotechnology to new medicines. This brief review will first talk about several nano- or microgels systems fabricated by natural or synthetic polymers, and further discuss their applications when integrated with various types of biologics. In particular, we will concentrate on the dynamics embedded in these bio-hybrid systems, to dissect their designs and sophisticated functions.
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Quantitative biology is dedicated to taking advantage of quantitative reasoning and advanced engineering technologies to make biology more predictable. Microfluidics, as an emerging technique, provides new approaches to precisely control fluidic conditions on small scales and collect data in high-throughput and quantitative manners. In this review, the authors present the relevant applications of microfluidics to quantitative biology based on two major categories (channel-based microfluidics and droplet-based microfluidics), and their typical features. We also envision some other microfluidic techniques that may not be employed in quantitative biology right now, but have great potential in the near future.