FIPRESCI: droplet microfluidics based combinatorial indexing for massive-scale 5′-end single-cell RNA sequencing

Single-cell RNA sequencing methods focusing on the 5'-end of transcripts can reveal promoter and enhancer activity and efficiently profile immune receptor repertoire. However, ultra-high-throughput 5'-end single-cell RNA sequencing methods have not been described. We introduce FIPRESCI, 5'-end single-cell combinatorial indexing RNA-Seq, enabling massive sample multiplexing and increasing the throughput of the droplet microfluidics system by over tenfold. We demonstrate FIPRESCI enables the generation of approximately 100,000 single-cell transcriptomes from E10.5 whole mouse embryos in a single-channel experiment, and simultaneous identification of subpopulation differences and T cell receptor signatures of peripheral blood T cells from 12 cancer patients.