Identification of cell types from single-cell transcriptomes using a novel clustering method. Results: In this article, we describe a novel algorithm named shared nearest neighbor (SNN)-Cliq that clusters single-cell transcriptomes. SNN-Cliq utilizes the concept of shared nearest neighbor that shows advantages in handling high-dimensional data. When evaluated on a variety of synthetic and real experimental datasets, SNN-Cliq outperformed the state-of-the-art methods tested. More importantly, the clustering results of SNN-Cliq reflect the cell types or origins with high accuracy. Availability and implementation: The algorithm is implemented in MATLAB and Python. The source code can be downloaded at http://bioinfo.uncc.edu/SNNCliq.