Table 1.

Qualitative comparison of library preparation methods for single-cell RNAseq. Note that full-length methods are not compatible with UMIs, and that all UMI methods capture only the 3′ end of the transcript. In-vitro transcription methods also include UMIs. Precision defined as reproducibility of the gene expression quantification. More the (+) signs, higher the costs or amplification bias or number of genes or cells (Ziegenhain et al., 2017).

	Technology	No. of cells	No. of genes	Amplification bias	Cost
Full-length cDNA methods	Smart-seq/C1	+	++	+++	++
	Smart-seq2	++	++++	+++	+++
UMI methods	SCRB-seq	+++	+++	++	+
	Drop-seq	++++	+	++	+
In-vitro transcription methods	MARS-seq	+++	+	+	+
	CEL-seq2/C1	++	++	+	++