Single Cell sequencing - population controls and other controls?

Question

[Genosa]

Hi, I am a new to this field and especially in ssRNA-seq.

While I read papers, I notice studies often include a population or bulk control of variable cell numbers. What is the purpose of this population control, and what sort of cell population is considered optimal? Thank you

Answer 1

[Devon Ryan]

Single cell sequencing is both new and still a bit tricky to do...making you worry that any effect that you might be seeing is due to some technical artifact or limitation in the technique. What people like to show is that population controls match the average of their single-cell samples. If that's the case, then it's difficult for someone to argue that the reported effect is artefactual.

Regarding what sort of cell population to use, it should just be a combination of cells identical to those used for single-cell sequencing (normally these are all collected by flow sorting or something like that).