Revealing Gene Expression Heterogeneity in a Clonal Population ofTetrahymena thermophilathrough Single-Cell RNA Sequencing

Abstract

AbstractWe investigated the gene expression variability in a population of 5,000Tetrahymena thermophilacells using single-cell RNA sequencing. During preprocessing, we enhanced read mappings by estimating the 3′-untranslated regions using the “peaks2utr” method. The resulting expression patterns enabled us to identify several prevalent clusters within the RNA expression space. Some of these clusters corresponded to specific cell phases. After regressing out these phase-related clusters, we performed a gene ontology analysis to identify the remaining clusters. We propose that these remaining clusters represent emerging sub-populations within theTetrahymenapopulation, primarily associated with translation, energy production, and cell structure.