InquiryDifficult-to-isolate cells, such as long-term archived tissue, brain cells, and adipocytes, are not isolatable under current enzymatic and mechanical strategies and often damage the other cellular compartments. Hence, single nucleus RNA sequencing becomes particularly important.
snRNA Sequencing is a technology developed at the single-cell level, which can directly capture nuclei of frozen samples using the high-resolution single-cell sequencing strategy to accurately distinguish cell heterogeneity, as well as reveal gene structures and gene expression status of individual cells. Sn-RNA sequencing particularly resolves challenges regarding certain precious frozen and heterogeneous cell samples that cannot be used in single-cell experiments. Hence, it helps clinical treatment and diagnosis of cardiopulmonary diseases and neurodevelopment as well as accelerates the era of precision medicine.
snRNA Sequencing Workflow
Advantages of snRNA-seq
Reduce biased recovery of easily dissociated cell types
Eliminate dissociation-induced aberrant transcriptional responses
Compatible with frozen samples
Disadvantage of snRNA-seq
Loss of transcripts in the cytoplasm
Sample Requirements
Sample type
1. Frozen tissue, cultured cells, and others
2. -80℃ storage, dry ice transport
Data Analysis
Why Choose snRNA-seq Technology
The rapid development of the single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology has provided insight into cell types and specific cellular states of tissues in a given time. However, because a successful scRNA-seq requires high-quality sample inputs, that is, cell suspensions of organs or solid tissues of appropriate cell activity and cell number, that being said, ample valuable clinical samples (brain tissue, tumor tissue, etc.) preserved at ultra-low temperatures are not suitable for scRNA sequencing. Fortunately, the invention of the single-cell nuclear RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) technology has largely solved the abovementioned obstacles.
The snRNA-seq technology is considered more advanced than single-cell RNA sequencing technology in terms of sample applicability because snRNA-seq is not limited to fresh tissue samples but is also suitable for frozen samples. In addition, the preparation of single-cell nuclei is simpler than that of single-cell suspensions, which minimizes the generation of false cell populations induced by enzymatic dissociation and mechanical stress. In data analysis, snRNA-seq supports data regarding the intron and intergenic regions, higher resolution for cell types identification, and relatively more thorough gene information.
Meanwhile, single-cell sequencing has the following shortages in sample dissociation
1. scRNA-seq cannot be performed on frozen samples because cells have been inactivated, as it can only apply to fresh tissue samples.
2. The dissociation process induces the expression of stress genes, causing "artifactual transcriptional stress responses" in cells, resulting in transcriptional bias; thus, obtained data do not truly reflect the transcriptional status of the sample, and the reliability of the results is greatly reduced.
3. For many solid tissues, such as the brain, heart, kidney, etc., proteases tend to dissociate easy-to-isolate cell types; hence, loss of information is observed with the difficult-to-isolate cells. Simultaneously, sensitive cells may be fragmented due to excessive dissociation. Therefore, the dissociation process does not effectively capture all cell types in the tissue, and the accuracy of the results is greatly reduced.
