Dispen-Seq: a single-microparticle dispenser based strategy towards flexible cell barcoding for single-cell RNA sequencing

Single-cell RNA sequencing(scRNA-seq) has become one of the most powerful tools to understand the heterogeneity of biological systems.While barcoding strategies have revolutionized the field of high-throughput scRNA-seq, it is still challenging to achieve highly efficient, direct and universal cell barcoding with cost-effectiveness and minimal sample loss.Herein, a single micro-particle dispenser approach for rapid single barcode bead/cell manipulation and pairing, enabling highly efficient cell barcoding for scRNA-seq(Dispen-Seq) was developed.Notably, Dispen-Seq provides a versatile platform which can enrich cell subgroups of interest while unlimited by input sample amounts, and can respond to changes in sample composition with high resolution and reproducibility.It is anticipated that Dispen-Seq will increase the scope of scRNA-seq from academic research to practical applications.

单细胞RNA测序（scRNA - seq）已成为理解生物系统异质性的最强大工具之一。虽然条形码策略已经彻底改变了高通量scRNA - seq领域，但要实现高效、直接且通用的细胞条形码标记，同时兼具成本效益和最小的样本损失，仍然具有挑战性。在此，我们开发了一种用于快速单条形码磁珠/细胞操作和配对的单微粒分配器方法，能够为scRNA - seq实现高效的细胞条形码标记（Dispen - Seq）。值得注意的是，Dispen - Seq提供了一个通用的平台，它可以富集感兴趣的细胞亚群，不受输入样本量的限制，并且能够以高分辨率和可重复性响应样本组成的变化。预计Dispen - Seq将把scRNA - seq的应用范围从学术研究扩展到实际应用。