Chang Lu, professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Virginia Tech, has received a three-year grant with a total of $624,420 from National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of NIH, for his project “Drop-BS: high throughput single-cell bisulfite sequencing on a microfluidic droplet platform”.

In the project, Lu and his team will develop a novel technology that allows mapping of epigenomes of single cells rapidly and in a large number. Such a tool will find use in analyses of scarce patient samples with a high heterogeneity in general. The technology will be demonstrated using samples of breast tumors.

The project is a collaboration with Rong Li, professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.