Abstract Rapid advances in Ribonucleic Acid sequencing (or RNA-seq) technology for analyzing entire transcriptomes of desired tissue samples, or even of single cells at scale, have revolutionized biology in the past decade. Increasing accessibility and falling costs are making it possible to address many problems in biology that were once considered intractable, including the study of various social behaviors. RNA-seq is opening new avenues to understand long-standing questions on the molecular basis of behavioral plasticity and individual variation in the expression of a behavior. As whole transcriptomes are examined, it has become possible to make unbiased discoveries of underlying mechanisms with little or no necessity to predict genes involved in advance. However, researchers need to be aware of technical limitations and have to make specific decisions when applying RNA-seq to study social behavior. Here, we provide a perspective on the applications of RNA-seq and experimental design considerations for behavioral scientists who are unfamiliar with the technology but are considering using it in their research.

中文翻译：

---

转录组学在理解社会行为方面的设计、挑战和潜力

摘要 在过去十年中，核糖核酸测序（或 RNA-seq）技术在分析所需组织样本的整个转录组，甚至是大规模单细胞的转录组方面取得了快速进展，彻底改变了生物学。提高可及性和降低成本使得解决生物学中曾经被认为难以解决的许多问题成为可能，包括对各种社会行为的研究。RNA-seq 为理解行为可塑性的分子基础和行为表达的个体变异的长期存在的问题开辟了新的途径。随着对整个转录组的检查，有可能对潜在机制进行无偏见的发现，而无需或几乎不需要预先预测相关基因。然而，研究人员需要了解技术限制，并且在应用 RNA-seq 研究社会行为时必须做出具体决定。在这里，我们为不熟悉该技术但正在考虑在研究中使用它的行为科学家提供了关于 RNA-seq 的应用和实验设计考虑的观点。