Predicting the functional states of human iPSC-derived neurons with single-cell RNA-seq and electrophysiology

Neural progenitors derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) develop into electrophysiologically active neurons at heterogeneous rates, which can confound disease-relevant discoveries in neurology and psychiatry. The goal of this study was to resolve the diversity of functional states of hPSC-derived neurons in vitro by combining patch clamping with morphological and RNA-sequencing analysis of single neurons (Patch-seq). Overall design: Whole-transcriptome, single-cell mRNA-seq profiles of 56 patch-clamped and morphologically characterized cells (50 differentiated neurons and 6 astrocytes) generated using Smart-seq (SMARTer) chemistry.