In vitro pigmentation of human iPSC-derived retinal pigment epithelium cells is not indicative of their quality for cell transplantation

Retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells show heterogeneous level of pigmentation when cultured in vitro. We used Automated Live imaging and cell Picking System (ALPS) with single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to analyze the correlation between color intensities and gene expression profiles of human-induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell-derived RPE cells. The color intensity of each RPE cell and its gene expression profile were obtained by the Automated Live imaging and cell Picking System (ALPS) combined with scRNA-seq.