Single-Cell Signature Explorer for comprehensive visualization of single cell signatures across scRNA-seq datasets

Abstract

The momentum of scRNA-seq datasets prompts for simple and powerful tools exploring their meaningful signatures. Here we present Single-Cell Signature Explorer (https://sites.google.com/site/fredsoftwares/products/single-cell-signature-explorer), the first method for qualitative and high-throughput scoring of any gene set-based signature at the single cell level and its visualization using t-SNE or UMAP. By scanning datasets for single or combined signatures, it rapidly maps any multi-gene feature, exemplified here with signatures of cell lineages, biological hallmarks and metabolic pathways in large scRNAseq datasets of human PBMC, melanoma, lung cancer and adult testis.