scholarly journals Recent Developments and Applications of Single-Cell RNA Sequencing Technology in Cell Classification

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (12) ◽  
pp. 1283-1290
Author(s):  
Safir Ullah Khan ◽  
Munir Ullah Khan

Multicellular organisms have many cell types and are complex, and heterogeneity is common among cells. Single-Cell RNA Sequencing (scRNA-SEQ) is a new technique for studying the transcriptional activity of a single cell that is still in its early stages of development. It generates transcriptional profiles from thousands of parallel cells to reveal the differential expression of individual cell genomes. They reflect the heterogeneity between cells to identify different cell types and form cell maps of tissues or organs, which play an essential role in biology and clinical medicine. Based on the introduction and comparison of the scRNA-SEQ sequencing platform, this paper focuses on the application of scRNA-SEQ in the exploration of cell types in the nervous system and immune system and summarizes the research results of the combination of scRNA-SEQ and spatial transcriptome technology.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaxin Fan ◽  
Xuran Wang ◽  
Rui Xiao ◽  
Mingyao Li

AbstractAllelic expression imbalance (AEI), quantified by the relative expression of two alleles of a gene in a diploid organism, can help explain phenotypic variations among individuals. Traditional methods detect AEI using bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data, a data type that averages out cell-to-cell heterogeneity in gene expression across cell types. Since the patterns of AEI may vary across different cell types, it is desirable to study AEI in a cell-type-specific manner. Although this can be achieved by single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), it requires full-length transcript to be sequenced in single cells of a large number of individuals, which are still cost prohibitive to generate. To overcome this limitation and utilize the vast amount of existing disease relevant bulk tissue RNA-seq data, we developed BSCET, which enables the characterization of cell-type-specific AEI in bulk RNA-seq data by integrating cell type composition information inferred from a small set of scRNA-seq samples, possibly obtained from an external dataset. By modeling covariate effect, BSCET can also detect genes whose cell-type-specific AEI are associated with clinical factors. Through extensive benchmark evaluations, we show that BSCET correctly detected genes with cell-type-specific AEI and differential AEI between healthy and diseased samples using bulk RNA-seq data. BSCET also uncovered cell-type-specific AEIs that were missed in bulk data analysis when the directions of AEI are opposite in different cell types. We further applied BSCET to two pancreatic islet bulk RNA-seq datasets, and detected genes showing cell-type-specific AEI that are related to the progression of type 2 diabetes. Since bulk RNA-seq data are easily accessible, BSCET provided a convenient tool to integrate information from scRNA-seq data to gain insight on AEI with cell type resolution. Results from such analysis will advance our understanding of cell type contributions in human diseases.Author SummaryDetection of allelic expression imbalance (AEI), a phenomenon where the two alleles of a gene differ in their expression magnitude, is a key step towards the understanding of phenotypic variations among individuals. Existing methods detect AEI use bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data and ignore AEI variations among different cell types. Although single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has enabled the characterization of cell-to-cell heterogeneity in gene expression, the high costs have limited its application in AEI analysis. To overcome this limitation, we developed BSCET to characterize cell-type-specific AEI using the widely available bulk RNA-seq data by integrating cell-type composition information inferred from scRNA-seq samples. Since the degree of AEI may vary with disease phenotypes, we further extended BSCET to detect genes whose cell-type-specific AEIs are associated with clinical factors. Through extensive benchmark evaluations and analyses of two pancreatic islet bulk RNA-seq datasets, we demonstrated BSCET’s ability to refine bulk-level AEI to cell-type resolution, and to identify genes whose cell-type-specific AEIs are associated with the progression of type 2 diabetes. With the vast amount of easily accessible bulk RNA-seq data, we believe BSCET will be a valuable tool for elucidating cell type contributions in human diseases.


PLoS Genetics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. e1009080
Author(s):  
Jiaxin Fan ◽  
Xuran Wang ◽  
Rui Xiao ◽  
Mingyao Li

Allelic expression imbalance (AEI), quantified by the relative expression of two alleles of a gene in a diploid organism, can help explain phenotypic variations among individuals. Traditional methods detect AEI using bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data, a data type that averages out cell-to-cell heterogeneity in gene expression across cell types. Since the patterns of AEI may vary across different cell types, it is desirable to study AEI in a cell-type-specific manner. Although this can be achieved by single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), it requires full-length transcript to be sequenced in single cells of a large number of individuals, which are still cost prohibitive to generate. To overcome this limitation and utilize the vast amount of existing disease relevant bulk tissue RNA-seq data, we developed BSCET, which enables the characterization of cell-type-specific AEI in bulk RNA-seq data by integrating cell type composition information inferred from a small set of scRNA-seq samples, possibly obtained from an external dataset. By modeling covariate effect, BSCET can also detect genes whose cell-type-specific AEI are associated with clinical factors. Through extensive benchmark evaluations, we show that BSCET correctly detected genes with cell-type-specific AEI and differential AEI between healthy and diseased samples using bulk RNA-seq data. BSCET also uncovered cell-type-specific AEIs that were missed in bulk data analysis when the directions of AEI are opposite in different cell types. We further applied BSCET to two pancreatic islet bulk RNA-seq datasets, and detected genes showing cell-type-specific AEI that are related to the progression of type 2 diabetes. Since bulk RNA-seq data are easily accessible, BSCET provided a convenient tool to integrate information from scRNA-seq data to gain insight on AEI with cell type resolution. Results from such analysis will advance our understanding of cell type contributions in human diseases.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenta Sato ◽  
Koki Tsuyuzaki ◽  
Kentaro Shimizu ◽  
Itoshi Nikaido

AbstractRecent technical improvements in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) have enabled massively parallel profiling of transcriptomes, thereby promoting large-scale studies encompassing a wide range of cell types of multicellular organisms. With this background, we propose CellFishing.jl, a new method for searching atlas-scale datasets for similar cells and detecting noteworthy genes of query cells with high accuracy and throughput. Using multiple scRNA-seq datasets, we validate that our method demonstrates comparable accuracy to and is markedly faster than the state-of-the-art software. Moreover, CellFishing.jl is scalable to more than one million cells, and the throughput of the search is approximately 1,600 cells per second.


Author(s):  
Yinlei Hu ◽  
Bin Li ◽  
Falai Chen ◽  
Kun Qu

Abstract Unsupervised clustering is a fundamental step of single-cell RNA sequencing data analysis. This issue has inspired several clustering methods to classify cells in single-cell RNA sequencing data. However, accurate prediction of the cell clusters remains a substantial challenge. In this study, we propose a new algorithm for single-cell RNA sequencing data clustering based on Sparse Optimization and low-rank matrix factorization (scSO). We applied our scSO algorithm to analyze multiple benchmark datasets and showed that the cluster number predicted by scSO was close to the number of reference cell types and that most cells were correctly classified. Our scSO algorithm is available at https://github.com/QuKunLab/scSO. Overall, this study demonstrates a potent cell clustering approach that can help researchers distinguish cell types in single-cell RNA sequencing data.


eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Periklis Paganos ◽  
Danila Voronov ◽  
Jacob M Musser ◽  
Detlev Arendt ◽  
Maria Ina Arnone

Identifying the molecular fingerprint of organismal cell types is key for understanding their function and evolution. Here, we use single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to survey the cell types of the sea urchin early pluteus larva, representing an important developmental transition from non-feeding to feeding larva. We identify 21 distinct cell clusters, representing cells of the digestive, skeletal, immune, and nervous systems. Further subclustering of these reveal a highly detailed portrait of cell diversity across the larva, including the identification of neuronal cell types. We then validate important gene regulatory networks driving sea urchin development and reveal new domains of activity within the larval body. Focusing on neurons that co-express Pdx-1 and Brn1/2/4, we identify an unprecedented number of genes shared by this population of neurons in sea urchin and vertebrate endocrine pancreatic cells. Using differential expression results from Pdx-1 knockdown experiments, we show that Pdx1 is necessary for the acquisition of the neuronal identity of these cells. We hypothesize that a network similar to the one orchestrated by Pdx1 in the sea urchin neurons was active in an ancestral cell type and then inherited by neuronal and pancreatic developmental lineages in sea urchins and vertebrates.


Cephalalgia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (13) ◽  
pp. 1976-1983 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Renthal

Background Migraine is a debilitating disorder characterized by severe headaches and associated neurological symptoms. A key challenge to understanding migraine has been the cellular complexity of the human brain and the multiple cell types implicated in its pathophysiology. The present study leverages recent advances in single-cell transcriptomics to localize the specific human brain cell types in which putative migraine susceptibility genes are expressed. Methods The cell-type specific expression of both familial and common migraine-associated genes was determined bioinformatically using data from 2,039 individual human brain cells across two published single-cell RNA sequencing datasets. Enrichment of migraine-associated genes was determined for each brain cell type. Results Analysis of single-brain cell RNA sequencing data from five major subtypes of cells in the human cortex (neurons, oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, microglia, and endothelial cells) indicates that over 40% of known migraine-associated genes are enriched in the expression profiles of a specific brain cell type. Further analysis of neuronal migraine-associated genes demonstrated that approximately 70% were significantly enriched in inhibitory neurons and 30% in excitatory neurons. Conclusions This study takes the next step in understanding the human brain cell types in which putative migraine susceptibility genes are expressed. Both familial and common migraine may arise from dysfunction of discrete cell types within the neurovascular unit, and localization of the affected cell type(s) in an individual patient may provide insight into to their susceptibility to migraine.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 286-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziwei Wang ◽  
Hui Ding ◽  
Quan Zou

Abstract Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has generated numerous data and renewed our understanding of biological phenomena at the cellular scale. Identification of cell types has been one of the most prevalent means for interpreting scRNA-seq data, based upon which connections are made between the transcriptome and phenotype. Herein, we attempt to review the methods and tools that dedicate to the task regarding their feature and usage and look at the possibilities for scRNA-seq development in the near future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick S. Stumpf ◽  
Xin Du ◽  
Haruka Imanishi ◽  
Yuya Kunisaki ◽  
Yuichiro Semba ◽  
...  

AbstractBiomedical research often involves conducting experiments on model organisms in the anticipation that the biology learnt will transfer to humans. Previous comparative studies of mouse and human tissues were limited by the use of bulk-cell material. Here we show that transfer learning—the branch of machine learning that concerns passing information from one domain to another—can be used to efficiently map bone marrow biology between species, using data obtained from single-cell RNA sequencing. We first trained a multiclass logistic regression model to recognize different cell types in mouse bone marrow achieving equivalent performance to more complex artificial neural networks. Furthermore, it was able to identify individual human bone marrow cells with 83% overall accuracy. However, some human cell types were not easily identified, indicating important differences in biology. When re-training the mouse classifier using data from human, less than 10 human cells of a given type were needed to accurately learn its representation. In some cases, human cell identities could be inferred directly from the mouse classifier via zero-shot learning. These results show how simple machine learning models can be used to reconstruct complex biology from limited data, with broad implications for biomedical research.


Author(s):  
Jun Cheng ◽  
Wenduo Gu ◽  
Ting Lan ◽  
Jiacheng Deng ◽  
Zhichao Ni ◽  
...  

Abstract Aims Hypertension is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. However, vascular remodelling, a hallmark of hypertension, has not been systematically characterized yet. We described systematic vascular remodelling, especially the artery type- and cell type-specific changes, in hypertension using spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). Methods and results Single-cell RNA sequencing was used to depict the cell atlas of mesenteric artery (MA) and aortic artery (AA) from SHRs. More than 20 000 cells were included in the analysis. The number of immune cells more than doubled in aortic aorta in SHRs compared to Wistar Kyoto controls, whereas an expansion of MA mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) was observed in SHRs. Comparison of corresponding artery types and cell types identified in integrated datasets unravels dysregulated genes specific for artery types and cell types. Intersection of dysregulated genes with curated gene sets including cytokines, growth factors, extracellular matrix (ECM), receptors, etc. revealed vascular remodelling events involving cell–cell interaction and ECM re-organization. Particularly, AA remodelling encompasses upregulated cytokine genes in smooth muscle cells, endothelial cells, and especially MSCs, whereas in MA, change of genes involving the contractile machinery and downregulation of ECM-related genes were more prominent. Macrophages and T cells within the aorta demonstrated significant dysregulation of cellular interaction with vascular cells. Conclusion Our findings provide the first cell landscape of resistant and conductive arteries in hypertensive animal models. Moreover, it also offers a systematic characterization of the dysregulated gene profiles with unbiased, artery type-specific and cell type-specific manners during hypertensive vascular remodelling.


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