Advanced analysis and applications of single-cell transcriptome sequencing

Abstract

Single-cell transcriptome sequencing (scRNA-seq) is an unparalleled technology in the field of transcriptomics, which can study cells in a comprehensive and unbiased manner, thus characterizing complex biological processes at the cellular level. At the same time, scRNA-seq can produce a large amount of experimental data; therefore, the extraction of important information is required. In this review, we summarize the common applications of scRNA-seq analysis, such as of cellular communication, pseudo-timing, transcription factors, and functional enrichment, to mine cellular information and reveal the regulatory relationships between genes and trajectories of different cell lineages during development. We also describe the latest technological progress of scRNA-seq use in organoid, pathogenic gene variants, tumor tissues, stem cells, viruses, antibody preparation, and so on, in order to improve its applicability in future research in the life science field.

Keywords

• single cell transcriptome sequencing
• cellular communication
• pseudo-time
• scenic
• functional enrichment