Delineating genotypes and phenotypes of individual cells from long-read single cell transcriptomes

Abstract

AbstractSingle-cell nanopore sequencing of full-length mRNAs (scNanoRNAseq) is transforming singlecell multi-omics studies. However, challenges include computational complexity and dependence on short-read curation. To address this, we developed a comprehensive toolkit, scNanoGPS to calculate same-cell genotypes-phenotypes without short-read guidance. We applied scNanoGPS onto 23,587 long-read transcriptomes from 4 tumors and 2 cell lines. Standalone, scNanoGPS accurately deconvoluted error-prone long-reads into single-cells and single-molecules. Further, scNanoGPS simultaneously accessed both phenotypes (expressions/isoforms) and genotypes (mutations) of individual cells. Our analyses revealed that tumor and stroma/immune cells often expressed significantly distinct combinations of isoforms (DCIs). In a kidney tumor, we identified 924 genes with DCIs involved in cell-type-specific functions such asPDE10Ain tumor cells andCCL3in lymphocytes. Moreover, transcriptome-wide mutation analyses identified many cell-type-specific mutations includingVEGFAmutations in tumor cells andHLA-Amutations in immune cells, highlighting critical roles of different populations in tumors. Together, scNanoGPS facilitates applications of single-cell long-read sequencing.