Single Cell RNA-Seq

RNA-seq transcriptome measurements are typically performed by isolating RNA from large numbers of cells in culture or tissues. While highly informative, such experiments mask the variability in gene expression patterns that exists between individual cells. To gain insight into the dynamics of gene expression on the level of single-cells, we have carried out the transcriptomes of single-cells from the GM12878 cell line using RNA-seq. Single GM12878 cells were picked and RNA-seq libraries were generated using the SMART-seq protocol. We also carried out RNA-seq experiments on pools of 10, 30 and 100 cells, on 100pg and 10ng of total RNA, and on pools of 10 cells that were subsequently split into 10 separate sample and processed as if they were single cells in order to assess technical variation in our experiments.