Single-cell multiomics sequencing and analyses of human colorectal cancer

scTrio-seq identifies colon cancer lineages To better design treatments for cancer, it is important to understand the heterogeneity in tumors and how this contributes to metastasis. To examine this process, Bian et al. used a single-cell triple omics sequencing (scTrio-seq) technique to examine the mutations, transcriptome, and methylome within colorectal cancer tumors and metastases from 10 individual patients. The analysis provided insights into tumor evolution, linked DNA methylation to genetic lineages, and showed that DNA methylation levels are consistent within lineages but can differ substantially among clones. Science, this issue p. 1060 A multiomics approach reconstructs genetic lineages and epigenomic and transcriptomic dynamics of patient-derived disseminating tumors. Although genomic instability, epigenetic abnormality, and gene expression dysregulation are hallmarks of colorectal cancer, these features have not been simultaneously analyzed at single-cell resolution. Using optimized single-cell multiomics sequencing together with multiregional sampling of the primary tumor and lymphatic and distant metastases, we developed insights beyond intratumoral heterogeneity. Genome-wide DNA methylation levels were relatively consistent within a single genetic sublineage. The genome-wide DNA demethylation patterns of cancer cells were consistent in all 10 patients whose DNA we sequenced. The cancer cells’ DNA demethylation degrees clearly correlated with the densities of the heterochromatin-associated histone modification H3K9me3 of normal tissue and those of repetitive element long interspersed nuclear element 1. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of reconstructing genetic lineages and tracing their epigenomic and transcriptomic dynamics with single-cell multiomics sequencing.