Method
Quartz-Seq: a highly reproducible and sensitive single-cell RNA sequencing method, reveals non-genetic gene-expression heterogeneity
- † Equal contributors
1 Functional Genomics Unit, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, 2-2-3 Minatojima-minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan
2 Genome Resource and Analysis Unit, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, 2-2-3 Minatojima-minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan
3 Laboratory for Systems biology, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, 2-2-3 Minatojima-minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan
4 Laboratory for Sensory Circuit Formation, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, 2-2-3 Minatojima-minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan
5 JST, PRESTO, 2-2-3 Minatojima-minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan
6 Laboratory for Synthetic Biology, Quantitative Biology Center, RIKEN, 2-2-3 Minatojima-minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan
7 Bioinformatics Research Unit, Advanced Center for Computing and Communication, RIKEN, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
Genome Biology 2013, 14:R31 doi:10.1186/gb-2013-14-4-r31
Published: 17 April 2013Abstract
Development of a highly reproducible and sensitive single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) method would facilitate the understanding of the biological roles and underlying mechanisms of non-genetic cellular heterogeneity. In this study, we report a novel single-cell RNA-seq method called Quartz-Seq that has a simpler protocol and higher reproducibility and sensitivity than existing methods. We show that single-cell Quartz-Seq can quantitatively detect various kinds of non-genetic cellular heterogeneity, and can detect different cell types and different cell-cycle phases of a single cell type. Moreover, this method can comprehensively reveal gene-expression heterogeneity between single cells of the same cell type in the same cell-cycle phase.
