Compressed Perturb-seq: highly efficient screens for regulatory circuits using random composite perturbations

Pooled CRISPR screens with single-cell RNA-seq readout (Perturb-seq) have emerged as a key technique in functional genomics, but are limited in scale by cost and combinatorial complexity. Here, we reimagine Perturb-seq’s design through the lens of algorithms applied to random, low-dimensional observations. We present compressed Perturb-seq, in which we measure multiple perturbations per cell or multiple cells per droplet, and decompress these measurements by leveraging the sparse structure of regulatory circuits. Applying compressed Perturb-seq to 598 genes in the immune response to bacterial lipopolysaccharide, we achieve the same accuracy as conventional Perturb-seq at 4 to 20-fold reduced cost, with greater power to learn genetic interactions. We identify known and novel regulators of immune responses and uncover evolutionarily constrained genes with downstream targets enriched for immune disease heritability, including many missed by existing GWAS or trans-eQTL studies. Our framework enables new scales of interrogation for a foundational method in functional genomics. scRNA-seq of THP-1 cells expressing Cas9 or dCas9-KRAB transduced with sgRNA libraries targeting 598 genes as well as non-targeting controls, using both the conventional Perturb-seq experimental protocol as well as our modifications for compressed Perturb-seq. Cells were treated with LPS for 3 hours before sequencing.