BTEP Single-Cell and Spatial Omics Seminar Series

This session will introduce the Single Cell and Spatial Core (SCSC), formerly known as CCR Single Cell Analysis Facility (CCR SCAF), offering an overview of the single-cell and spatial genomics technologies available to NCI CCR investigators. We’ll highlight core resources and support for project planning, experimental design, sequencing, and downstream data analysis, with a particular focus on how these methods can advance cancer research.

This seminar spotlights the initial data processing steps at SCSC (CCR SCAF) as well as the early quality assessment of single-cell and spatial transcriptomics data, providing insights into dataset quality before moving on to downstream filtering and quality control in Seurat or other analysis workflows.

This session introduces the major ecosystems for single-cell analysis (Seurat, scverse, and Bioconductor), comparing their core data objects and highlighting key learning resources. The session then transitions into a practical walkthrough of data import and the fundamentals of the Seurat object, setting the stage for hands-on analysis in the sessions ahead.

This seminar will introduce the major steps in a standard single-cell RNA-seq analysis workflow, from quality control and filtering through normalization, dimensionality reduction, and clustering. The talk will focus on the reasoning behind each step, common choices researchers face, and how these early analytical decisions shape downstream interpretation of cell populations and biological results.