Department of Bioengineering and Biotechnology, Sandia National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, United States.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2012 Jun;23(3):437-43. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2011.11.018. Epub 2011 Dec 7.
Whole genome amplification and next-generation sequencing of single cells have become a powerful approach for studying uncultivated microorganisms that represent 90-99% of all environmental microbes. Single cell sequencing enables not only the identification of microbes but also linking of functions to species, a feat not achievable by metagenomic techniques. Moreover, it allows the analysis of low abundance species that may be missed in community-based analyses. It has also proved very useful in complementing metagenomics in the assembly and binning of single genomes. With the advent of drastically cheaper and higher throughput sequencing technologies, it is expected that single cell sequencing will become a standard tool in studying the genome and transcriptome of microbial communities.
单细胞全基因组扩增和下一代测序已成为研究未培养微生物的有力方法，这些微生物代表了所有环境微生物的 90-99%。单细胞测序不仅可以识别微生物，还可以将功能与物种联系起来，这是宏基因组技术无法实现的。此外，它还可以分析在基于群落的分析中可能遗漏的低丰度物种。它在补充宏基因组学中单基因组的组装和分类方面也非常有用。随着价格更低廉、高通量测序技术的出现，预计单细胞测序将成为研究微生物群落基因组和转录组的标准工具。
