Differential performance of strategies for single-cell whole-genome amplification

Single-cell genomics enables studying tissues and organisms at the highest resolution. However, since a cell contains a small amount of DNA, single-cell DNA sequencing (scDNA-seq) typically requires single-cell whole-genome amplification (scWGA). Unfortunately, scWGA methods introduce technical biases that complicate the interpretation of scDNA-seq data. We compared six scWGA methods, three MDA (multiple displacement amplification; GenomiPhi, REPLI-g, and TruePrime) and three non-MDA (Ampli1, MALBAC, and PicoPLEX), on 206 tumoral and 24 healthy human cells. scWGA methods performed differently depending on the parameter of interest. REPLI-g minimized regional amplification bias, while non-MDA methods showed a more uniform and reproducible amplification. Ampli1 exhibited the lowest allelic imbalance and dropout, the most accurate insertion or deletion (indel) and copy-number detection, and a low polymerase error rate. However, REPLI-g yielded higher DNA quantities, longer amplicons, and greater genome coverage. We offer a comprehensive guide for selecting a scWGA approach, outlining trade-offs that influence the interpretation of scDNA-seq data.