Single-cell RNA sequencing will produce a vast amount of information on diseases.

A single tissue sample of a patient can with modern technology be used to profile thousands, sometimes even tens of thousands of cells.   We can reliably profile which type of cells it contains.

“Even if the cells may look identical under the microscope, their function may turn out to be quite different once we are able to view gene expression with single-cell accuracy,” says researcher Päivi Saavalainen.

Saavalainen works at the Folkhälsan Research Center and she is also the CEO of a company called SCellex that specialises in single-cell technology. Saavalainen, who together with the Finland ELIXIR Node of CSC has organised single-cell analytics courses for researchers, considers single-cell technology one of the most revolutionary methods in biosciences over the last few years.

“In cancer research, for example, it is important to obtain information about a single cell. The fact is that cancer cells change all the time, meaning that each cell begins to be different. There are also gene mutations, as a result of which certain genes are activated and others deactivated.”

The datasets are huge and the services of Finland ELIXIR Node of CSC can help to perform the computation. Saavalainen says that the AI models are vital.

“If a sample contains tens of thousands of cells and all of them are subject to tens of thousands of gene measurement results, then not only the data on the microbeads but also the actual biological RNA data is immensely complex. You need AI to analyse it. AI can find such new information that simply would not be possible with traditional analysis tools. I think the computing power of CSC is sufficient even to solve our challenging AI models.”