Identifying Single Cell Transcriptomic of Cerebellar Cells Using Drop-Seq Technology

The cerebellum takes 10 percent of the brain and contains more than half of the total number of neurons in the brain. Single-cell RNA sequencing is the capable technology to identify and function of diverse cell types in the cerebellum. Traditionally, RNA sequencing was achieved by employing in-plate techniques. This class of approaches, however, suffer from low efficiency and low throughput. The vast diversity of cell types in the cerebellum required novel high-throughput techniques in order to discover new cell types and understand how they function. RNA sequencing with droplet-based technologies has recently been developed to aim this goal, subcategorizing in Drop-seq, inDrop, and 10X genomic techniques. In this literature review, the similarities and differences between droplet-based techniques are discussed. Also, some case studies have been summarized in each of which a droplet-based technique has been used to discover new cell types in the cerebellum. Overall, Drop-seq has proven to be a low-cost and fast method to analyze mRNA expression in thousands of cells simultaneously, and it is expected to accelerate biological discoveries in near future.