Single cell suspensions of plant origin have been successfully cleaned up and the cells taken for further processing.
In the example below, all live and viable target plant cells levitate higher than the dead cells, dying cells and non-cellular biomass.
Levitation technology has been used and published by researchers at the VIB (Flemish institute of Biotechnology):
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Dual and spatially resolved drought responses in the Arabidopsis leaf mesophyll revealed by single-cell transcriptomics (New Phytologist, Volume 246, Issue 3, May 2025)
These discoveries have contributed to the leaf annotation atlas.
Example video
Levitation of a C. ipecacuanha leaf digest. In the video above, we can see how over the course of levitation the starch granules form a levitation band very low in the chamber. Much of the biomass from the digested leaves is also falling down, leaving behind a highly enriched suspension of live target cells.
Strikingly, it is observed how significant plant biomass, including the starch grains from the rhizomes is pooled to the bottom of the chamber, leaving behind a fraction of live cells in suspension.
When observed under the microscope, it can be clearly seen how the top fraction (left) is comprised of mainly regular, in tact viable cells compared to the input sample (right):
Using levitation technology the live cell fraction can be harvested and because an enriched, clean single cell suspension is obtained further cellular analysis, such as single cell sequencing, or metabolomic analysis of single cells can occur as outlined in the papers above.