ChromInst: A single cell sequencing technique to accomplish pre-implantation comprehensive chromosomal screening overnight

Abstract

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is a powerful tool getting into the field of clinical examination. Its preliminary application in pre-implantation comprehensive chromosomal screening (PCCS) of assisted reproduction (test-tube baby) has shown encouraging outcomes that improves the success rate of in vitro fertilization. However, the conventional NGS library construction is time consuming. In addition with the whole genome amplification (WGA) procedure in prior, makes the single cell NGS assay hardly be accomplished within an adequately short turnover time in supporting fresh embryo implantation. In this work, we established a concise single cell sequencing protocol, ChromInst, in which the single cell WGA and NGS library construction were integrated into a two-step PCR procedure of ~ 2.5hours reaction time. We then validated the feasibility of ChromInst for overnight PCCS assay by examining 14 voluntary donated embryo biopsy samples in a single sequencing run of Miseq with merely 13M reads production. The good compatibility of ChromInst with the restriction of Illumina sequencing technique along with the good library yield uniformity resulted superior data usage efficiency and reads distribution evenness that ensures precisely distinguish of 6 normal embryos from 8 abnormal one with variable chromosomal aneuploidy. The superior succinctness and effectiveness of this protocol permits its utilization in other time limited single cell NGS applications.