Single-cell RNA-seq analysis of mouse preimplantation embryos by third-generation sequencing

PLoS Biol. 2020 Dec 30;18(12):e3001017. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001017. eCollection 2020 Dec.

Abstract

The development of next generation sequencing (NGS) platform-based single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) techniques has tremendously changed biological researches, while there are still many questions that cannot be addressed by them due to their short read lengths. We developed a novel scRNA-seq technology based on third-generation sequencing (TGS) platform (single-cell amplification and sequencing of full-length RNAs by Nanopore platform, SCAN-seq). SCAN-seq exhibited high sensitivity and accuracy comparable to NGS platform-based scRNA-seq methods. Moreover, we captured thousands of unannotated transcripts of diverse types, with high verification rate by reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR)-coupled Sanger sequencing in mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs). Then, we used SCAN-seq to analyze the mouse preimplantation embryos. We could clearly distinguish cells at different developmental stages, and a total of 27,250 unannotated transcripts from 9,338 genes were identified, with many of which showed developmental stage-specific expression patterns. Finally, we showed that SCAN-seq exhibited high accuracy on determining allele-specific gene expression patterns within an individual cell. SCAN-seq makes a major breakthrough for single-cell transcriptome analysis field.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Alleles
  • Animals
  • Blastocyst / metabolism*
  • Female
  • Gene Expression Profiling / methods
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / methods
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Mice, Inbred C57BL
  • Mice, Inbred DBA
  • Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells / metabolism
  • Oocytes / metabolism
  • RNA / metabolism
  • Sequence Analysis, RNA / methods*
  • Single-Cell Analysis / methods*
  • Transcriptome / genetics

Substances

  • RNA

Grants and funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31625018) and Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (Z181100001318001). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.