Tal Gordon

Reference-free discovery with barcoded single-cell sequencing

Roozbeh Dehghannasiri, Marek Kokot, Alexander L. Starr, Jamie Maziarz, Tal Gordon, Serena Y. Tan, Peter L. Wang, Ayelet Voskoboynik, Jacob M. Musser, Sebastian Deorowicz, Julia Salzman

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analyses typically focus on alignment and differential gene expression, being blind to other transcriptome variation. Here we present sc-SPLASH for statistics-first, reference-free discovery on barcoded scRNA-seq and spatial transcriptomics; its independent BKC submodule optimizes barcoded data preprocessing and is approximately 50-fold faster than UMI-tools. sc-SPLASH discovers secreted repeat proteins in immune-like cells of sponge (Spongilla; missing from the reference) and tunicate (Ciona).

Publication language English

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Biotechnology
Bioengineering
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
Biomedical Engineering
Molecular Medicine

PubMed: MeSH publication types

Journal Article
Access to Document
10.1038/s41587-026-03084-6
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Link to publication in Scopus