FIGURE 1.

Single-cell RNA-sequencing is able to resolve distinct individual cellular transcriptomes compared to bulk RNA-sequencing. a) Whole lung tissue with distinct cellular components represented by blue circles, red squares and yellow triangles; b) transcriptional output of bulk RNA-sequencing experiments results in an averaging of the individual cellular signals. While some marker genes unique to cell types may indicate the presence of that cell type (protruding corners of red square and arcs of blue circle), the overall signal will be a mixture of the cell types (purple) and may obscure the transcriptomic signature of rare cell types (dashed triangle); c) in a single-cell experiment, every cell type (red square, blue circle, yellow triangle) is represented.