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Reply to: UMI or not UMI, that is the question for scRNA-seq zero-inflation

Nature Biotechnology volume 39, page 160 (2021)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 01 February 2021

replying to Y. Cao et al. Nature Biotechnology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-00810-6

In the February 2020 issue, I highlighted that popular droplet-based single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) methods do not produce zero-inflated data1. I used an example to point out that, contrary to popular belief, the full-length low-throughput SMART-seq protocol, in fact, results in a higher amount of zeros. Cao et al.2 write to clarify that this is not due to the cell-isolation method (microwell plates versus integrated fluidic circuits versus droplets), but rather the use of unique molecular identifiers (UMIs), which are used to account for duplication of complementary DNA fragments during the amplification process3.

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References

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  2. Cao, Y., Kitanovski, S., Küppers, R. & Hoffmann, D. UMI or not UMI, that is the question for scRNA-seq zero-inflation. Nat. Biotechnol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-00810-6 (2021).

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  1. Serqet Therapeutics Inc., Computational Biology & Data Science, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Valentine Svensson

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  1. Valentine Svensson
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Correspondence to Valentine Svensson.

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Svensson, V. Reply to: UMI or not UMI, that is the question for scRNA-seq zero-inflation. Nat Biotechnol 39, 160 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-00811-5

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