Discovery of alternative polyadenylation dynamics from single cell types

Congting Ye; Juncheng Lin; Qingshun Q Li

doi:10.1016/j.csbj.2020.04.009

Discovery of alternative polyadenylation dynamics from single cell types

Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2020 Apr 20:18:1012-1019. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2020.04.009. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Congting Ye¹, Juncheng Lin¹, Qingshun Q Li^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Coastal and Wetland Ecosystems, College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian 361102, China.
² Graduate College of Biomedical Sciences, Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, CA 91766, USA.

Abstract

Alternative polyadenylation (APA) occurs in the process of mRNA maturation by adding a poly(A) tail at different locations, resulting increased diversity of mRNA isoforms and contributing to the complexity of gene regulatory network. Benefit from the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies, we could now delineate APA profiles of transcriptomes at an unprecedented pace. Especially the single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies provide us opportunities to interrogate biological details of diverse and rare cell types. Despite increasing evidence showing that APA is involved in the cell type-specific regulation and function, efficient and specific laboratory methods for capturing poly(A) sites at single cell resolution are underdeveloped to date. In this review, we summarize existing experimental and computational methods for the identification of APA dynamics from diverse single cell types. A future perspective is also provided.

Keywords: 3′ end sequencing; Alternative polyadenylation; Cell type; Computational analysis; Single-cell RNA-seq.

Publication types

Review