Characterization of differentiating adipose cells by high-throughput single-cell RNA-Seq

Directed differentiation of cells in vitro is a powerful approach for dissection of developmental pathways, disease modeling and regenerative medicine, but analysis of such systems are complicated by heterogeneous and asynchronous cellular responses to differentiation-inducing stimuli. To enable deep characterization of heterogeneous cell populations, we developed an efficient digital gene expression profiling protocol that enables surveying of mRNA in thousands of single cells at a time. We then applied this protocol to profile 11,116 cells collected during directed differentiation of human adipose-derived stem/stromal cells. The resulting data reveals the major axes of cell-to-cell variation within and between time points and suggests a link between incomplete adipogenesis in vitro and adipocyte dysfunction in vivo. Overall design: High-throughput single cell RNA-seq method applied to human adipose tissue-derived stromal/stem cells during differentiation towards an adipogenic fate

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