June 26, 2024 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlightedthe following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked peer-reviewed publication trusted source proofread by Olivia Dimmer, Northwestern University Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a new technique to identify individual cells for RNA sequencing, which will empower scientists to gather more accurate and precise scientific data, according to details published in Cell Genomics . RNA sequencing, designed to reveal the quantity of RNA molecules in a biological sample and give scientists a snapshot of gene expression, has quickly become an essential tool in scientific research , said Yogesh Goyal, Ph.
D., assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and senior author of the study. "Single-cell RNA sequencing has really transformed the world of biomedicine," said Goyal, who is also a member of the Center for Synthetic Biology.
"But one of the fundamental limitations of this technology is trying to isolate a single cell to pass through a microfluidic device. It's very easy to have more than one cell inside each sample. It leads to a lot of false-positives and false-negatives.
" To address this, Goyal and his collaborators first employed a barcoding technique, in which individual cells (singlets) are labeled with unique nucleic acid sequences so they can be more easily tracked throughout an experiment. Next, the i.