Table 2. Summary of mitochondrial isolation methods (Microscale).

A table highlighting the relative benefits and disadvantages of different ‘microscale’ mitochondrial methods of mitochondrial isolation, incorporating either density gradient centrifugation (DGC), differential centrifugation (DC) or none. Techniques compared relative to the performance of DGC alone*: ++ = higher; + = slightly higher or similar; - = lower; ddPCR = digital droplet PCR; LCM = laser capture microdissection; NGS = next generation sequencing; OT = optical tweezers; SEM = Scanning Electron Microscopy.

Isolation Method	Prior Fractionation	Mitochondrial Yield *	Mitochondrial Purity *	Starting Material *	Expense *	Throughput *	Subcellular Spatial Precision	Serial Sampling	Confirmation	General Comments	References
Micro-AP	DC	-	++	-	-	++	No	No	fluorescence microscopy	High mitochondrial viability; low run time; predisposed to clogging	Kayo et al. (2013) and Banik et al. (2016)
Micro-FFE	DC	-	++	-	-	++	No	No	electrophoretic profiling	High mitochondrial viability; low run time; predisposed to clogging	Kostal et al. (2009)
Micro-FFF	DC	-	++	-	-	++	No	No	fluorescence microscopy	High mitochondrial viability; low run time	Lu et al. (2004)
LCM	None	-	++	-	++	-	Yes	No	fluorescence microscopy, ddPCR, qPCR	Targets a single cell; may cause laser induced mtDNA damage	Vincent et al. (2018) and Trifunov et al. (2018)
OT	None	-	++	-	++	-	Yes	No	fluorescence microscopy; SEM	Targets a single cell; may cause laser induced mtDNA damage	König et al. (2005) and Jeffries et al. (2007)