The rise of single-cell transcriptomics has revolutionized the discovery of neuronal types and led to the discovery of numerous transcriptionally defined subtypes of neurons, allowing interfacing with methods evaluating the function of these neuronal types and with disease genetics to identify cellular loci of neuropathologies. This Methods Collection aims to highlight the most recent advances in genomic techniques in profiling transcriptomes, epigenomes, accessibility, and 3D genome architecture.

The high cellular heterogeneity in nervous tissue poses several challenges, such as difficulty in recovering rare cell types and differential sensitivity of cell types to isolation methods. Moreover, the presence of high amounts of myelin, especially in non-human primates and human brains, also creates obstacles. Many labs have optimized conditions to overcome these challenges when applying high-throughput genomic techniques to study the nervous system. Through this collection, we aim to create a repository of these optimized protocols to facilitate the discovery process.