You would have to be really, really precise to be able to sort into 2uL consistently (perhaps someone else here can chime in, but that's been my experience with any Aria sorters). More than likely, what is happening is that your cell is hitting the wall of the wells, and when you're sorting for 10 or 100 cells, the droplets are big enough to keep the cells from drying out right away.
There might be a couple things you could try. You could just raise the lysis buffer volume to 5 uL. In my experience, you usually end up yielding 2-3 uL anyway, considering evaporation and all. Even if you end up with more, you can stretch the final cDNA reaction to 12 uL without too much of a difference, in my experience.
You could also add some of the RT buffer to your lysis buffer to bring up the volume. Some of our collaborators do that (I think they actually skip the lysis buffer all together, and just sort into 5uL of RT buffer, DTT and all, without the enzyme), and it seems to work pretty consistently.
There might be a couple things you could try. You could just raise the lysis buffer volume to 5 uL. In my experience, you usually end up yielding 2-3 uL anyway, considering evaporation and all. Even if you end up with more, you can stretch the final cDNA reaction to 12 uL without too much of a difference, in my experience.
You could also add some of the RT buffer to your lysis buffer to bring up the volume. Some of our collaborators do that (I think they actually skip the lysis buffer all together, and just sort into 5uL of RT buffer, DTT and all, without the enzyme), and it seems to work pretty consistently.
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