Abstract

Transcriptome analysis, or transcriptome sequencing, concerns the transcript sequences transcribed from the genome of a specific cell type at specific time and growth conditions. Previous studies have clearly demonstrated that, besides messenger RNA (mRNA), the transcribed RNA sequences also contain large amounts of ribosomal RNA (rRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA) and small-sized non-coding RNA (ncRNA). Transcriptome analysis focuses mainly on mRNA, and sometimes, certain types of ncRNA species which may be co-isolated with mRNA when gene expression and regulation are of the major concern. From transcriptome sequencing, a number of biological information can be retrieved. These include gene expression level, transcriptome landscape across the entire genome, Gene Ontology, pathway, etc. Notice that transcriptome analysis normally refers to the whole transcriiptome analysis of a cell population. The result is in fact a combination of millions of potentially diversified single-cell transcriptomes.