Genome Biology (Apr 2019)

BRB-seq: ultra-affordable high-throughput transcriptomics enabled by bulk RNA barcoding and sequencing

  • Daniel Alpern,
  • Vincent Gardeux,
  • Julie Russeil,
  • Bastien Mangeat,
  • Antonio C. A. Meireles-Filho,
  • Romane Breysse,
  • David Hacker,
  • Bart Deplancke

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-019-1671-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 20, no. 1
pp. 1 – 15

Abstract

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Abstract Despite its widespread use, RNA-seq is still too laborious and expensive to replace RT-qPCR as the default gene expression analysis method. We present a novel approach, BRB-seq, which uses early multiplexing to produce 3′ cDNA libraries for dozens of samples, requiring just 2 hours of hands-on time. BRB-seq has a comparable performance to the standard TruSeq approach while showing greater tolerance for lower RNA quality and being up to 25 times cheaper. We anticipate that BRB-seq will transform basic laboratory practice given its capacity to generate genome-wide transcriptomic data at a similar cost as profiling four genes using RT-qPCR.

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