A heterogeneous cellular response to ionizing radiation revealed by single cell transcriptome sequencing

We report a heterogeneous cellular response to IR by single cell transcriptome sequencing utilizing the modified Smart-seq2 technology in cultured MDA-MB-231 cells. Single cell tSNE clustering analysis showed four distinctive clusters of cells. And in the absence of the ATM kinase, cells displayed much less transcriptional changes after IR. We also selected three detected IR-induced genes for functional validation to confirm their importance in radiosensitivity. Overall design: Detection of transcriptional changes after IR in wild-type and ATM knock-down MDA-MB-231 cell lines.