Woo Hyunmin, Eyun Seong-Il
Department of Life Science, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Korea.
Brief Bioinform. 2025 Jul 2;26(4). doi: 10.1093/bib/bbaf354.
Single-cell ribonucleic acid sequencing (scRNA-seq) is an important tool in molecular biology, allowing transcriptomic profiling at the single-cell level. This transformative technology has provided unprecedented insights into cellular heterogeneity, lineage differentiation, and cell-type-specific gene expression patterns, significantly advancing our understanding of complex biological systems. scRNA-seq is broadly applied across various fields, including oncology, where it sheds light on intratumoral heterogeneity and precision medicine strategies, and developmental biology, where it uncovers cellular trajectories in both model and non-model organisms. Additionally, scRNA-seq has been instrumental in ecological genomics, which can help elucidate cellular responses to environmental perturbations and species interactions. Despite these advancements, several challenges remain, particularly technical and financial barriers, limiting its application to non-model organisms and tissues with complex cellular compositions. Addressing these issues will require continued innovation in single-cell isolation methods, cost-effective sequencing technologies, and sophisticated bioinformatics tools. As scRNA-seq advances, it can deepen our understanding of biological systems, with broad implications for personalized medicine, evolutionary biology, and ecological research.
单细胞核糖核酸测序(scRNA-seq)是分子生物学中的一项重要工具,可在单细胞水平上进行转录组分析。这项变革性技术为细胞异质性、谱系分化和细胞类型特异性基因表达模式提供了前所未有的见解,极大地推进了我们对复杂生物系统的理解。scRNA-seq广泛应用于各个领域,包括肿瘤学,它揭示了肿瘤内的异质性和精准医学策略;以及发育生物学,它揭示了模式生物和非模式生物中的细胞轨迹。此外,scRNA-seq在生态基因组学中发挥了重要作用,有助于阐明细胞对环境扰动的反应和物种间的相互作用。尽管取得了这些进展,但仍存在一些挑战,特别是技术和资金障碍,限制了其在非模式生物和具有复杂细胞组成的组织中的应用。解决这些问题需要在单细胞分离方法、经济高效的测序技术和先进的生物信息学工具方面持续创新。随着scRNA-seq的不断发展,它可以加深我们对生物系统的理解,对个性化医学、进化生物学和生态研究具有广泛的意义。