Ultra-high throughput single-cell RNA sequencing by combinatorial fluidic indexing

Cell atlas projects and high-throughput perturbation screens require single-cell sequencing at a scale that is challenging with current technology. To enable cost-effective single-cell sequencing for millions of individual cells, we developed “single-cell combinatorial fluidic indexing” (scifi). The scifi-RNA-seq assay combines one-step combinatorial pre-indexing of entire transcriptomes inside permeabilized cells with subsequent single-cell RNA-seq using microfluidics. Pre-indexing allows us to load multiple cells per droplet and bioinformatically demultiplex their individual expression profiles. Thereby, scifi-RNA-seq massively increases the throughput of droplet-based single-cell RNA-seq, and it provides a straightforward way of multiplexing thousands of samples in a single experiment. Compared to multi-round combinatorial indexing, scifi-RNA-seq provides an easier, faster, and more efficient workflow. In contrast to cell hashing methods, which flag and discard droplets containing more than one cell, scifi-RNA-seq resolves and retains individual transcriptomes from overloaded droplets. We benchmarked scifi-RNA-seq on various human and mouse cell lines, validated it for primary human T cells, and applied our method in a highly multiplexed CRISPR screen with single-cell transcriptome readout of T cell receptor activation.