Figure 5. Microfluidic blocking of cell-to-cell signaling affects response heterogeneity in “core” antiviral and “peaked” inflammatory modules.

(a) Experimental blocking of cell-to-cell communication. Left: C₁ chip; Right: On-chip stimulation, followed by actuation of microfluidic valves (red bars), seals the cells at individual chambers, preventing intercellular signaling. (b) Expression of the genes (rows) in the “core” antiviral (I_d, top rows) and “peaked” inflammatory (III_c, bottom rows) modules in single cells (columns) from the “in-tube” (left) and “on-chip” (right) stimulations. (c) Gene expression distributions for representative genes from the “core” antiviral (top) and “peaked” inflammatory (bottom) modules in the “in-tube” (left, black) or “on-chip” (right, blue) 4h LPS stimulation. (c) Violin plots of, top to bottom, “core” antiviral (SI, top), “peaked” inflammatory (middle), and “sustained” inflammatory (bottom) scores for individual cells from the stimulation conditions listed on the X axis. Yellow stars: the two “precocious” cells from Fig. 4 (Extended Fig. 10a).