Department of Pathology and Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Nat Genet. 2019 Jan;51(1):19-25. doi: 10.1038/s41588-018-0290-x. Epub 2018 Dec 17.
Recent advances in single-cell and single-molecule epigenomic technologies now enable the study of genome regulation and dynamics at unprecedented resolution. In this Perspective, we highlight some of these transformative technologies and discuss how they have been used to identify new modes of gene regulation. We also contrast these assays with recent advances in single-cell transcriptomics and argue for the essential role of epigenomic technologies in both understanding cellular diversity and discovering gene regulatory mechanisms. In addition, we provide our view on the next generation of biological tools that we expect will open new avenues for elucidating the fundamental principles of gene regulation. Overall, this Perspective motivates the use of these high-resolution epigenomic technologies for mapping cell states and understanding regulatory diversity at single-molecule resolution within single cells.
单细胞和单分子表观基因组学技术的最新进展使得人们能够以前所未有的分辨率研究基因组调控和动态。在本观点中，我们重点介绍了其中的一些变革性技术，并讨论了它们如何用于识别新的基因调控模式。我们还将这些测定方法与单细胞转录组学的最新进展进行了对比，并认为表观基因组学技术在理解细胞多样性和发现基因调控机制方面都具有重要作用。此外，我们还对下一代生物学工具提出了看法，我们预计这些工具将为阐明基因调控的基本原理开辟新的途径。总的来说，本观点激励人们使用这些高分辨率表观基因组学技术来绘制细胞状态图谱，并在单细胞内以单分子分辨率理解调控多样性。
