Generalization of the sci-L3 method to achieve high-throughput linear amplification for replication template strand sequencing, genome conformation capture, and the joint profiling of RNA and chromatin accessibility

Single-cell combinatorial indexing (sci-) methods have addressed major limitations of throughput and cost for many single cell modalities. With the incorporation of linear amplification and 3-level barcoding in our suite of methods called sci-L3, we further addressed the limitations of uniformity in single cell genome amplification. Here, we build on the generalizability of sci-L3 by extending it to template strand sequencing (sci-L3-Strand-seq), genome conformation capture (sci-L3-Hi-C), and the joint profiling of RNA and chromatin accessibility (sci-L3-RNA/ATAC). We demonstrate the ease of adapting sci-L3 to these new modalities by only requiring a single-step modification of the original protocol. As a proof-of-principle, we show our ability to detect sister chromatid exchanges, genome compartmentalization, and cell state specific features in thousands of single cells. We anticipate sci-L3 to be compatible with additional modalities, including DNA methylation (sci-MET) and chromatin associated factors (CUT&Tag), and ultimately enable a multi-omics readout of them.