Bisulfite-free epigenomics and genomics of single cells analyzed by methylation sensitive restriction (epi-gSCAR)

Single-cell multi-omics are powerful means to study cell-to-cell heterogeneity. Here, we present a single-tube, bisulfite-free method for the simultaneous, genome-wide analysis of DNA methylation and genetic variants in single cells: epigenomics and genomics of single cells analyzed by restriction (epi-gSCAR). By applying this method, we obtained DNA methylation measurements of up to 506,063 CpGs and up to 1,244,188 single-nucleotide variants from single leukemia-derived cells. We demonstrate that epi-gSCAR generates accurate and reproducible measurements of DNA methylation and allows to differentiate between two cell lines based on the DNA methylation and genetic profiles. Overall design: DNA methylation and gene variant analysis of 27 single Kasumi-1 and 20 single OCI-AML3 AML cells