From lenses to semi-permeable capsules: How scientists keep getting closer to life itself

Single-cell biology has moved from “seeing cells” to explaining how information becomes function. That shift exposed a practical bottleneck: we need platforms that keep single-cell resolution and let us run multi-step workflows at scale. Atrandi Biosciences’ patented Semi-Permeable Capsule (SPC) technology answers that need. SPCs isolate individual cells inside permeable hydrogel shells, so you can swap buffers, stage incompatible reactions, culture or lyse, then barcode and sequence, across tens of thousands of cells in parallel. In this paper, we trace the road to single-cell thinking, outline where current compartments fall short, and show how SPCs open up robust genomics and assay development, especially for eukaryotic systems.