Lightning Fast and Highly Sensitive Full-Length Single-cell sequencing using FLASH-Seq

In the last 10 years, single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) has undergone exponential growth. Emulsion droplets methods ^1–3 , such as those commercialized by 10x Genomics, have allowed researchers to analyze tens of thousands of cells in parallel in a robust and reproducible way. However, in contrast to SMART-based full-length sequencing protocols ^4,5 , these methods interrogate only the outer portion of the transcripts and still lack the required sensitivity for analyzing comprehensively the transcriptome of individual cells. Building upon the existing SMART-seq forerunners protocols ^4,5 , we developed FLASH-Seq (FS), a new scRNA-seq method which displays greater sensitivity while decreasing incubation times and reducing the number of processing steps compared to its predecessors. The entire FS protocol - from lysed cells to pooled cDNA libraries - can be performed in ~4.5 hours, is automation-friendly and can be easily miniaturized to decrease costs.