From single-cell to cell-pool transcriptomes: stochasticity in gene expression and RNA splicing.

ABSTRACT: Single-cell RNA-seq mammalian transcriptome studies are at an early stage in uncovering cell-to-cell variation in gene expression, transcript processing and editing, and regulatory module activity. Despite great progress recently, substantial challenges remain, including discriminating biological variation from technical noise. Here we apply the SMART-seq single-cell RNA-seq protocol to study the reference lymphoblastoid cell line GM12878. By using spike-in quantification standards, we estimate the absolute number of RNA molecules per cell for each gene and find significant variation in total mRNA content: between 50,000 and 300,000 transcripts per cell. We directly measure technical stochasticity by a pool/split design and find that there are significant differences in expression between

SUBMITTER: Marinov GK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3941114 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature