Mediaspace scheduled maintenance: Aug 25, 2026 07:00 - 12:00 AM. During this time, videos will be temporarily unavailable. Check status updates.

Lecture

Single-cell and Spatially Resolved RNA-seq

Description

This lecture covers the importance of single-cell RNA-seq in resolving specific cell populations, the process of tissue dissociation, single-cell capture, cDNA synthesis, flow sorting, microfluidics, barcoding, quality control, and differential gene expression analysis. It also presents examples of single-cell transcriptomics in the mouse nervous system.

In MOOC

Neuroscience Reconstructed: Genetics and Brain Development

Official source

Quiz

Ontological neighbourhood

Biology

Genetics: Genomics

Anatomy: Neuroanatomy

Related concepts (32)

Transcriptomics technologies

Transcriptomics technologies are the techniques used to study an organism's transcriptome, the sum of all of its RNA transcripts. The information content of an organism is recorded in the DNA of its genome and expressed through transcription. Here, mRNA serves as a transient intermediary molecule in the information network, whilst non-coding RNAs perform additional diverse functions. A transcriptome captures a snapshot in time of the total transcripts present in a cell.

Gene expression profiling

In the field of molecular biology, gene expression profiling is the measurement of the activity (the expression) of thousands of genes at once, to create a global picture of cellular function. These profiles can, for example, distinguish between cells that are actively dividing, or show how the cells react to a particular treatment. Many experiments of this sort measure an entire genome simultaneously, that is, every gene present in a particular cell. Several transcriptomics technologies can be used to generate the necessary data to analyse.

Transcriptome

The transcriptome is the set of all RNA transcripts, including coding and non-coding, in an individual or a population of cells. The term can also sometimes be used to refer to all RNAs, or just mRNA, depending on the particular experiment. The term transcriptome is a portmanteau of the words transcript and genome; it is associated with the process of transcript production during the biological process of transcription. The early stages of transcriptome annotations began with cDNA libraries published in the 1980s.

Gene expression

Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, proteins or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype. These products are often proteins, but in non-protein-coding genes such as transfer RNA (tRNA) and small nuclear RNA (snRNA), the product is a functional non-coding RNA.

Serial analysis of gene expression

Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) is a transcriptomic technique used by molecular biologists to produce a snapshot of the messenger RNA population in a sample of interest in the form of small tags that correspond to fragments of those transcripts. Several variants have been developed since, most notably a more robust version, LongSAGE, RL-SAGE and the most recent SuperSAGE. Many of these have improved the technique with the capture of longer tags, enabling more confident identification of a source gene.

Related lectures (38)

Bulk Transcriptome Analysis: RNA-seq Workflow and Gene Expression Analysis MOOC: Neuroscience Reconstructed: Genetics and Brain Development

Explains transcriptomics, RNA-seq workflow, and gene expression analysis for disease biomarkers.

Data available from the Allen human brain atlases

Covers the data available from the Allen human brain atlases, including gene expression analysis and the BrainSpan Atlas.

Cell types in the brain

Introduces neuronal gene expression data and characterizes neurons based on morphology and connectivity.

Immunoengineering: Engineering the Immune System

Delves into the complexity of the immune system, immunoengineering applications, and microengraving techniques for cell analysis.

Genomics Tools in Neuroscience Research MOOC: Neuroscience Reconstructed: Genetics and Brain Development