MR-seq: measuring a single cell’s transcriptome repeatedly by RNA-seq

• Published in: Science bulletin Vol. 62; no. 6; pp. 391 - 398
• Main Authors: Yang, Lu, Ma, Zhaochun, Cao, Chen, Zhang, Yuhao, Wu, Xinglong, Lee, Raymond, Hu, Boqiang, Wen, Lu, Ge, Hao, Huang, Yanyi, Lao, Kaiqin, Tang, Fuchou
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 30.03.2017
• Subjects: Differentially expressed genes; gene expression; gene expression regulation; genes; Intra-embryonic heterogeneity; mice; Mouse early preimplantation embryos; sequence analysis; Single-cell RNA-seq; transcriptome; Mouse early preimplantation embryos; Differentially expressed genes; Single-cell RNA-seq; Intra-embryonic heterogeneity
• ISSN: 2095-9273; 2095-9281
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2017.01.029

We described a novel single-cell RNA-seq technique called MR-seq (measure a single-cell transcriptome repeatedly), which permits statistically assessing the technical variation and identifying the differentially expressed genes between just two single cells by measuring each single cell twice. We demonstrated that MR-seq gave sensitivity and reproducibility similar to the standard single-cell RNA-seq and increased the positive predicate value. Application of MR-seq to early mouse embryos identified hundreds of candidate intra-embryonic heterogeneous genes among mouse 2-, 4- and 8-cell stage embryos. MR-seq should be useful for detecting differentially expressed genes among a small number of cells.