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June 1, 2021  |  

Transcriptome analysis using Hybrid-Seq

2015 SMRT Informatics Developers Conference Presentation Slides: Kin Fau Au of the University of Iowa presented on a suite of transcriptome analysis tools for junction detection, error correction, isoform detection and prediction, and gene fusion.


June 1, 2021  |  

Scalability and reliability improvements to the Iso-Seq analysis pipeline enables higher throughput sequencing of full-length cancer transcripts

The characterization of gene expression profiles via transcriptome sequencing has proven to be an important tool for characterizing how genomic rearrangements in cancer affect the biological pathways involved in cancer progression and treatment response. More recently, better resolution of transcript isoforms has shown that this additional level of information may be useful in stratifying patients into cancer subtypes with different outcomes and responses to treatment.1 The Iso-Seq protocol developed at PacBio is uniquely able to deliver full-length, high-quality cDNA sequences, allowing the unambiguous determination of splice variants, identifying potential biomarkers and yielding new insights into gene fusion events. Recent improvements to the Iso-Seq bioinformatics pipeline increases the speed and scalability of data analysis while boosting the reliability of isoform detection and cross-platform usability. Here we report evaluation of Sequel Iso-Seq runs of human UHRR samples with spiked-in synthetic RNA controls and show that the new pipeline is more CPU efficient and recovers more human and synthetic isoforms while reducing the number of false positives. We also share the results of sequencing the well-characterized HCC-1954 breast cancer and normal breast cell lines, which will be made publicly available. Combined with the recent simplification of the Iso-Seq sample preparation2, the new analysis pipeline completes a streamlined workflow for revealing the most comprehensive picture of transcriptomes at the throughput needed to characterize cancer samples.


June 1, 2021  |  

Full-Length RNA-seq of Alzheimer brain on the PacBio Sequel II System

The PacBio Iso-Seq method produces high-quality, full-length transcripts and can characterize a whole transcriptome with a single SMRT Cell 8M. We sequenced an Alzheimer whole brain sample on a single SMRT Cell 8M on the Sequel II System. Using the Iso-Seq bioinformatics pipeline followed by SQANTI2 analysis, we detected 162,290 transcripts for 17,670 genes up to 14 kb in length. More than 60% of the transcripts are novel isoforms, the vast majority of which have supporting cage peak data and polyadenylation signals, demonstrating the utility of long-read sequencing for human disease research.


April 21, 2020  |  

RNA sequencing: the teenage years.

Over the past decade, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) has become an indispensable tool for transcriptome-wide analysis of differential gene expression and differential splicing of mRNAs. However, as next-generation sequencing technologies have developed, so too has RNA-seq. Now, RNA-seq methods are available for studying many different aspects of RNA biology, including single-cell gene expression, translation (the translatome) and RNA structure (the structurome). Exciting new applications are being explored, such as spatial transcriptomics (spatialomics). Together with new long-read and direct RNA-seq technologies and better computational tools for data analysis, innovations in RNA-seq are contributing to a fuller understanding of RNA biology, from questions such as when and where transcription occurs to the folding and intermolecular interactions that govern RNA function.


April 21, 2020  |  

ORF Capture-Seq: a versatile method for targeted identification of full-length isoforms

Most human protein-coding genes are expressed as multiple isoforms. This in turn greatly expands the functional repertoire of the encoded proteome. While at least one reliable open reading frame (ORF) model has been assigned for every gene, the majority of alternative isoforms remains uncharacterized experimentally. This is primarily due to: i) vast differences of overall levels between different isoforms expressed from common genes, and ii) the difficulty of obtaining contiguous full-length ORF sequences. Here, we present ORF Capture-Seq (OCS), a flexible and cost-effective method that addresses both challenges for targeted full-length isoform sequencing applications using collections of cloned ORFs as probes. As proof-of-concept, we show that an OCS pipeline focused on genes coding for transcription factors increases isoform detection by an order of magnitude, compared to unenriched sample. In short, OCS enables rapid discovery of isoforms from custom-selected genes and will allow mapping of the full set of human isoforms at reasonable cost.


April 21, 2020  |  

Parallels between natural selection in the cold-adapted crop-wild relative Tripsacum dactyloides and artificial selection in temperate adapted maize.

Artificial selection has produced varieties of domesticated maize that thrive in temperate climates around the world. However, the direct progenitor of maize, teosinte, is indigenous only to a relatively small range of tropical and subtropical latitudes and grows poorly or not at all outside of this region. Tripsacum, a sister genus to maize and teosinte, is naturally endemic to the majority of areas in the western hemisphere where maize is cultivated. A full-length reference transcriptome for Tripsacum dactyloides generated using long-read Iso-Seq data was used to characterize independent adaptation to temperate climates in this clade. Genes related to phospholipid biosynthesis, a critical component of cold acclimation in other cold-adapted plant lineages, were enriched among those genes experiencing more rapid rates of protein sequence evolution in T. dactyloides. In contrast with previous studies of parallel selection, we find that there is a significant overlap between the genes that were targets of artificial selection during the adaptation of maize to temperate climates and those that were targets of natural selection in temperate-adapted T. dactyloides. Genes related to growth, development, response to stimulus, signaling, and organelles were enriched in the set of genes identified as both targets of natural and artificial selection. © 2019 The Authors The Plant Journal © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.


April 21, 2020  |  

The developmental dynamics of the Populus stem transcriptome.

The Populus shoot undergoes primary growth (longitudinal growth) followed by secondary growth (radial growth), which produces biomass that is an important source of energy worldwide. We adopted joint PacBio Iso-Seq and RNA-seq analysis to identify differentially expressed transcripts along a developmental gradient from the shoot apex to the fifth internode of Populus Nanlin895. We obtained 87 150 full-length transcripts, including 2081 new isoforms and 62 058 new alternatively spliced isoforms, most of which were produced by intron retention, that were used to update the Populus annotation. Among these novel isoforms, there are 1187 long non-coding RNAs and 356 fusion genes. Using this annotation, we found 15 838 differentially expressed transcripts along the shoot developmental gradient, of which 1216 were transcription factors (TFs). Only a few of these genes were reported previously. The differential expression of these TFs suggests that they may play important roles in primary and secondary growth. AP2, ARF, YABBY and GRF TFs are highly expressed in the apex, whereas NAC, bZIP, PLATZ and HSF TFs are likely to be important for secondary growth. Overall, our findings provide evidence that long-read sequencing can complement short-read sequencing for cataloguing and quantifying eukaryotic transcripts and increase our understanding of the vital and dynamic process of shoot development. © 2018 The Authors. Plant Biotechnology Journal published by Society for Experimental Biology and The Association of Applied Biologists and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.


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