Analysis of microRNA Regulation in Single Cells

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression by binding to mRNAs. Consequently, they reduce target gene expression levels and expression variability, also known as "noise." Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology has been used to study miRNA and mRNA expression in single cells, and has demonstrated its strength in quantifying cell-to-cell variation. Here we describe how to investigate miRNA regulation using data with both mRNA and miRNA expression in single cell format. We show that miRNAs reduce the expression levels and also expression noise of target genes in single cells. Finally, we also discuss potential improvements in experimental design and computational analysis of scRNA-seq in order to reduce or partition the technical noise.