Single Cell Discoveries is a contract research organisation offering high-quality single-cell and bulk transcriptomic services. They have over 10 years of experience and spun off from the Hubert Institute in 2018. Oriol Llorà Batlle, Team Lead, Research & Development, Single Cell Discoveries introduced a collaboration between Beckman Coulter and Single Cell Discoveries to automate high-throughput single-cell readouts.
Single Cell Discoveries provides an end-to-end service so that they are able to support their clients at every step of the project in question. The early consultation call aims to understand what the biological question is and determine which is the most suitable single-cell method or bulk transcriptomic method needed for that project. Then, various sample preparation steps, library preparation, and in-house sequencing are conducted. Llorà Batlle added that a large bioinformatics team is on hand to offer support with data consultancy.
Single Cell Discoveries has a diverse portfolio: with over 40 organisms and 30 tissues and various sample types such as fresh, frozen, fixed, xenografts, organoids, and primary tissues, the company has extensive sample types on offer. Furthermore, for single-cell methods, Llorà Batlle and his team typically rely on plate-based methods. They also have a high-throughput RNA transcriptomic profiling method called Discovery-Seq which has been specifically designed for drug screening purposes.
The Single Cell Discoveries collaboration with Beckman Coulter and 10X Genomics aims to automate high-throughput single-cell readouts. They use the Biomek i7 workstation from Beckman Coulter to automate the library preparation for 10X Genomics, significantly increasing throughput and reducing hands-on time. The Biomek i7 also allows for scalable and robust library prep.
The 10X Genomics workflow comprises a mix of manual steps like cell encapsulation and cDNA amplification and automation steps such as library prep. Llorà Batlle explained that the automated pipeline can prepare 96 libraries in 6.5 hours with only 1 hour of hands-on time, compared to manual preparation which takes 8.5 hours with 5.5 hours of hands-on time.
The validation step tested 3 and 5 prime kits using human PBMCs. The results showed no differences in data quality between manual and automated runs, with high reproducibility and no cross-contamination. For example, UMAP projections showed a significant overlap between manual and automated runs. Overall, Single Cell Discoveries offers flexible, platform-agnostic, and deeply consultative services.
