High throughput joint profiling of chromatin accessibility and protein levels in single cells [PBMCs]

Recent technological advances have enabled massively parallel single-cell Assay for Transposase Accessible Chromatin by sequencing (scATAC-seq) to simultaneously profile the epigenomic landscape in thousands of individual cells. scATAC-seq methods sample genomic DNA accessible to transposases, but have not previously been combined with measurement of protein levels. Here, we present ATAC with Select Antigen Profiling by sequencing, ASAP-seq, a tool to simultaneously profile accessible chromatin and protein levels in thousands of single cells, pairing sparse scATAC data with robust detection of hundreds of cell surface and intracellular protein markers, and optionally, enriched mtDNA coverage for lineage tracing (mtscATAC-seq) with minimal impact on ATAC-seq data quality. ASAP-seq makes use of a novel bridging approach to utilize existing commercially available antibody:oligo conjugates developed for CITE-seq and related technologies. We demonstrate the utility of ASAP-seq in the context of hematopoietic differentiation, cell surface marker dynamics following peripheral blood mononuclear cell stimulation, and as a combinatorial decoder of multiplexed perturbations in primary T cells. PBMCs were used in a series of experiments to technically characterize and advance ASAP-seq. Hashing, different conditions of lysis, staining with different conjugate families and intracellular staining were tested.