Single-cell transcriptional diversity is a hallmark of developmental potential

• DOI: 10.1126/science.aax0249
• Publication Date: 2020-01-24T00:09:26Z
• Authors: Gunsagar S. Gulati; Shaheen S. Sikandar; Daniel J. Wesche; Anoop Manjunath; Anjan Bharadwaj; Mark J. Berger; Francisco Ilagan; Angera H. Kuo; Robert W. Hsieh; Shang Cai; Maider Zabala; Ferenc A. Scheeren; Neethan A. Lobo; Dalong Qian; Feiqiao B. Yu; Frederick M. Dirbas; Michael F. Clarke; Aaron M. Newman
• Keywords: Mice; Base Sequence; Transcription, Genetic; Neoplasms; RNA, Small Cytoplasmic; Animals; Genetic Variation; Humans; Cell Differentiation; RNA-Seq; Single-Cell Analysis

More diversity at the top

A detailed knowledge of cell differentiation hierarchies is important for understanding diverse biological processes such as organ development, tissue regeneration, and cancer. Single-cell RNA sequencing can help elucidate these hierarchies, but it requires reliable computational methods for predicting cell lineage trajectories. Gulati et al. developed CytoTRACE, a computational framework based on the simple observation that transcriptional diversity—the number of genes expressed in a cell—decreases during differentiation. CytoTRACE outperformed other methods in several test cases and was successfully applied to study cellular hierarchies in healthy and tumor tissue.

Science , this issue p. 405