Low-coverage single-cell mRNA sequencing reveals cellular heterogeneity and activated signaling pathways in developing cerebral cortex.

The authors captured 301 single cells from 11 populations using microfluidics and analyzing single-cell transcriptomes across downsampled sequencing depths. They demonstrate that shallow single-cell mRNA sequencing (∼50,000 reads per cell) is sufficient for unbiased cell-type classification and biomarker identification in the developing cortex.