Current high-throughput single-cell methods detect only a small part of the transcriptome. The workflow presented here integrates molecular analysis and droplet microfluidics to derive total transcriptomic atlases that encompass alternative splicing and non-coding transcripts in large numbers of single cells. The utility of this method is demonstrated by analysis of mouse gastrulation and early organogenesis.
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References
Aldridge, S. & Teichmann, S. A. Single cell transcriptomics comes of age. Nat. Commun. 11, 4307 (2020). This Review article describes the state of the art and challenges in transcriptomics.
Hagemann-Jensen, M. et al. Single-cell RNA counting at allele and isoform resolution using Smart-seq3. Nat. Biotechnol. 38, 708–714 (2020). This paper reports Smart-seq3, the method previously claimed to have the highest information content per profiled cell.
Zheng, G. X. Y. et al. Massively parallel digital transcriptional profiling of single cells. Nat. Commun. 8, 14049 (2017). This paper reports the widely used commercial 10x Genomics Chromium droplet platform.
Abate, A. et al. High-throughput injection with microfluidics using picoinjectors. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107, 45 (2010). A microfluidic method enables the injection of an aqueous phase in the droplets to enable multistep reactions at high throughput.
Pijuan-Sala, B. et al. A single-cell molecular map of mouse gastrulation and early organogenesis. Nature 566, 490–495 (2019). A reference dataset generated with 10x Genomics Chromium is used for atlas benchmarking.
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This is a summary of: Salmen, F. et al. High-throughput total RNA sequencing in single cells using VASA-seq. Nat. Biotechnol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01361-8 (2022).
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Profiling the total single-cell transciptome using droplet microfluidics. Nat Biotechnol 40, 1766–1767 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01370-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01370-7
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