Laser-capture microdissection (LCM) is a method to isolate cells, single cells, even sub-cellular moieties, under direct microscopic visualization.
Thus, LCM can enrich and purify specific targets of interest for downstream applications such as DNA genotyping, RNA-SEQ, cDNA library generation, proteomics, or for cell cloning.
Cells are seeded on special membrane dishes for live cell capture, or special membrane slides when doing LMD on tissue sections. Under the microscope, cells are areas of interest are identified, marked, and a laser cuts around the ROI through the membrane and the cut cells are collected in tubes.