The paper by CNAG-CRG researchers "Single-cell transcriptome conservation in cryopreserved cells and tissues" is one of the 2017 top picks from Genome Biology.

Barcelona, December 22nd 2017.- The "Best of 2017" list highlights the editors’ favorite articles from the past year, including those that were highly accessed, shared, liked and discussed. The list includes studies from fields such as evolutionary genomics, crop genomics, cancer and disease genomics, epigenomics, technological advances and microbial genomics.

In particular, the paper led by Holger Heyn, team leader of the CNAG-CRG Single Cell Genomics team explains how CNAG-CRG's researchers substantially broadened the applicability of single cell genomics by combining cell and tissue cryopreservation with workflows of single cell sequencing methods.

The study analyzed more than 1,000 single cells either freshly prepared or cryopreserved up to 6 months. The researchers tested the most popular single cell sequencing strategies and could not detect a systematic bias introduced by the freezing procedure. Analyzing cell lines from different species and primary samples, including blood, colon and tumor samples, they illustrated the broad application spectrum of the method. According to the study, cryopreserved material can be readily combined with conventional single cell sequencing methods and the authors foresee its implementation as standard technique in this type of analysis.

Read more on the Single Cell Cryopreservation paper

Read the full list of Top Picks from Genome Biology