Single cell analysis of lung adenocarcinoma cell lines and the response to an anti-cancer drug stimulation

To understand heterogeneous behaviors of individual cancer cells, it should be important to investigate gene expression levels as well as their divergences between individual cells. Here we conducted a single cell RNA Seq analysis of a series of lung adenocarcinoma cell lines. We analyzed a total of 337 RNA Seq libraries of single cells and found gene expression diversities between individual cells are characteristic depending on genes. The genes showing highly variable expressions were enriched in particular pathways. Particularly, the EGFR pathway genes originally showed wider variations and further diversity was induced in response to an anticancer-drug stimulation. We also observed that cancer-related genes, which were identified from recent clinical cancer sequencing projects, showed potential expression variations, which firstly became apparent on the anti-cancer drug stimulation.

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