Stress relief: emerging methods to mitigate dissociation-induced artefacts
Open accessAbstract
The rapid progress of single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) at large scales has led to what seemed impossible until recently: the generation of comprehensive transcriptional maps of nearly all cells in multicellular tissues. We pinpoint three key elements as being critical to the production of these maps: scalability, spatial information, and accuracy of the transcriptome of the individual cells. Here, we discuss the ramifications of traditional cell-isolation protocols when capturing the transcriptional signature of cells as they exist in their native tissue context, the methods that have been developed to avoid these distortions, and the biological processes that have unraveled on account of these upgraded methodological approaches.
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Low-quality nuclei isolation protocols can introduce artifacts that compromise data interpretation and experimental reliability.
“Low-quality nuclei isolation protocols can introduce artifacts that compromise the proper data interpretation and the experimental reliability[32, 33].”
From Comparative analysis of nuclei isolation methods for brain single-nucleus RNA sequencing (2026) · cites this paper as [33]
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Comparative analysis of nuclei isolation methods for brain single-nucleus RNA sequencing
Kersey, H. N., Acri, D. J., Dabin, L. C., Hartigan, K. A., Mustaklem, R., Park, J. H., & Kim, J. (2026) · Cell Reports Methods · doi:10.1016/j.crmeth.2026.101337 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
- Authors
- Machado, L., Relaix, F., & Mourikis, P.
- Affiliations
- Inserm (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Mourikis, Philippos
- Venue
- Trends in Cell Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-11
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 888-897
- ISSN
- 0962-8924 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3164968781
- Cited by
- 70
- References
- 13
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 3
- FWCI
- 1.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ (am, 347 d)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-017 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-037 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-012 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-029 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-004 (stm-asf)
- Locations
- Trends in Cell Biology (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- ANR
- AFM-Telethon
- FRM
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology Techniques and Applications
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › RNA Research and Splicing
- Keywords
- single-cell RNA sequencing, cell isolation protocol, spatial transcriptomics, scalability
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Artifacts, Sequence Analysis, RNA, Gene Expression Profiling, Single-Cell Analysis, Transcriptome
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