The bright future of transcriptomics
Swiss scientists led by Bart Deplancke from the Institute of Bioengineering of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL's Institute of Bioengineering) have developed a new approach to RNA sequencing.
RNA sequencing is a method that is used to analyze the work of the genome by studying the expression of its genes. Such analyses are a standard tool for research in the field of transcriptomics, since they rely on technologies that are widely used today. However, RNA sequencing is still an expensive and time-consuming process, since first you need to prepare the entire pool of genes generated from the RNA of cells, and then the data obtained needs to be analyzed, which is also quite time-consuming and difficult. All this makes the method not too common. Fortunately, a new approach – barcoding and sequencing (BRB-seq) - reduces the cost and time of analysis, and also makes it possible to sequence RNA in a large number of samples. Among other things, the advantage of the method is the preservation of the specificity of the spirals. Thus, BRB-seq offers an inexpensive approach for work in the field of transcriptomics on hundreds of RNA samples, which can increase the number of biological copies (and, consequently, experimental accuracy) in one run. The technology allows you to test about 192 samples in just two hours a day.
The scientists also noted that BRB-seq can detect the same number of genes as the "gold standard" in this area, "TruSeq Stranded mRNA", at the same sequencing depth, and the method shows accurate results even using low-quality RNA samples.
The figure shows a comparison of the generally accepted RT-qPCR RNA sequencing method and the BRB-seq method.
Article by Alpern et al. BRB-seq: ultra-affordable high-throughput transcriptomics enabled by bulk RNA barcoding and sequencing is published in the journal Genome Biology.
Elena Panasyuk, portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru / based on the materials of École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne: BRB-seq: the quick and cheaper future of RNA sequencing.