Recordanelles for transcriptome-wide single-cell RNA recording in human cells

Transcriptomic measurement technologies provide powerful approaches to understand biology but are limited to providing either a high-resolution snapshot at a moment in time or a low-resolution history of transcription constrained to a few genes over a narrow time range. Here, we introduce the ‘recordanelle’, a single-component synthetic organelle capable of recording the transcriptome in human cells. Recordanelles are composed of a mitochondrial membrane anchor, a condensate assembler and a poly(A)-binding protein. We demonstrate that the recordanelle can be engineered to recruit engineered RNAs or a sampling of up to 90% of all endogenous mRNAs and protect them over several days. We further show that transient and dynamic transcriptional responses resulting from inducible promoters or interferon signaling are preserved throughout time within the recordanelle at the single-cell level. This work provides a nondisruptive and unbiased transcriptome-wide single-cell RNA recording technology to enable a deeper understanding of biology.