Single cell RNA sequencing analytical tools for studying cell differentiation

Alternative splicing has been shown to play important roles in cancer development. Currently, most alternative splicing studies stay on bulk RNA-seq level. Although it is estimated that 92% of human genes undergo alternative splicing, studies using bulk RNA-seq can only uncover alternative splicing for a small proportion of genes in cancer. This is due to the heterogeneous nature of cancer, in which significant splicing events specific for a cell population are averaged out over all heterogenous cells. Therefore, it is natural to resort to single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to handle the heterogeneity in cancer. In this project, I will use a multi-omics approach to systematically study alternative splicing and its regulation from scRNA-seq of cancer.