Reference component analysis of single-cell transcriptomes elucidates cellular heterogeneity in human colorectal tumors

Shyam Prabhakar, Paul Robson, Iain Beehuat Tan and colleagues characterize the cellular heterogeneity of colorectal tumors and their microenvironment on the basis of single-cell RNA–seq data analyzed with their newly developed clustering algorithm, reference component analysis (RCA). Their analyses identify two subtypes of cancer-associated fibroblasts and further divide tumors into subgroups with divergent survival probabilities.