NEW YORK – The Wellcome Sanger Institute said Tuesday that it is collaborating with Pacific Biosciences to apply long-read single-cell gene expression profiling to nearly 1,500 blood and gut tissue samples.
The project will analyze samples from three existing studies: IBDverse, a study of the genes, cell types, and pathways driving development and severity of Crohn's disease; IBD-Response, a study of drug responses in inflammatory bowel disease; and Project Jaguar, a collaboration across seven countries in Latin America looking at how genetic diversity shapes immune response.
Sanger researchers will apply long-read single-cell RNA sequencing, which can provide information on RNA expression, splicing, and isoforms, for the first time at scale, according to the institute. PacBio is providing an undisclosed amount of financial support.
The Sanger Institute plans to make the datasets publicly available worldwide once the results have been published. "In parallel, the team will share their technical insights and develop new computational methods to support the efficient analysis of long-read single-cell RNA data," the institute said in a statement.
PacBio began offering its Iso-Seq full-length RNA sequencing protocol in 2014 and launched Multiplexed Arrays Sequencing (MAS-seq), a kit for single-cell transcriptome and RNA isoform studies, in 2022, rebranding it a year later as Kinnex.