Tumor heterogeneity uncovered by dynamic expression of long noncoding RNA at single-cell resolution.

The expression of long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) is thought to be more cell-type specific than the expression of protein-coding genes. However, the expression profile of individual cells regarding lncRNA remains to be elucidated. Here, we comprehensively investigated the pattern of lncRNA expression across five glioblastoma tumors (414 cells) and two cell lines (GBM6 and GBM8, 127 cells). We found that there were more than 1,000 lncRNAs that varied between any two cells and that there was frequent gain and loss of lncRNA expression during tumor cell proliferation, suggesting a great heterogeneity in lncRNA expression across different single cells in glioblastoma.