UC San Diego

Live-Cell imaging and other fluorescence-based measurement technologies provide the best time resolution of a few minutes to seconds. However, despite recent advances with multiplexing reporters the number of unique reporters that can be recorded in a Cell is limited to a few dozen. Most studies still measure only one or two reporters at the same time at high temporal resolution. Unlike Live-Cell imaging, Single-cell RNA-seq and related technologies provide a genome-wide view for every time-point. For Single-cell RNA-seq however, the best time resolution is 30 minutes at best, while 1 hour is typical for studying fast dynamics. Therefore, to provide both high temporal resolution and genome-wide measurement of single-cell RNA we have invented Chrono-seq. Chrono-seq can take samples as fast as six minutes and as long as arbitrarily needed.