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Abstract
In recent years, single-cell RNA-seq has emerged as a powerful, new approach for characterizing the cell types present in a mixed population. These studies usually involve a trade-off between the number of samples analyzed and the number of RNA transcripts sequenced per cell, or sequencing depth, that can be achieved. In this issue, Pollen et al.1 present quantitative guidelines for determining the sequencing depth necessary to distinguish the cell types in a complex sample. Using a commercial microfluidic platform to capture hundreds of cells from a variety of human tissues and performing RNA-seq to different depths, they demonstrate accurate and reliable classification of cell types at a sequencing depth of only 50,000 reads per cell (Fig. 1a)about two orders of magnitude fewer than what has been typically reported.