Gene regulatory network reconstruction using single-cell RNA sequencing of barcoded genotypes in diverse environments

Understanding how gene expression programs are controlled requires identifying regulatory relationships between transcription factors and target genes. Gene regulatory networks are typically constructed from gene expression data acquired following genetic perturbation or environmental stimulus. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) captures the gene expression state of thousands of individual cells in a single experiment, offering advantages in combinatorial experimental design, large numbers of independent measurements, and accessing the interaction between the cell cycle and environmental responses that is hidden by population-level analysis of gene expression. To leverage these advantages, we developed a method for transcriptionally barcoding gene deletion mutants and performing scRNAseq in budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). We pooled diverse genotypes in 11 different environmental conditions and determined their expression state by sequencing 38,285 individual cells. We developed, and benchmarked, a framework for learning gene regulatory networks from scRNAseq data that incorporates multitask learning and constructed a global gene regulatory network comprising 12,018 interactions. Our study establishes a general approach to gene regulatory network reconstruction from scRNAseq data that can be employed in any organism.