Using Single-cell Genomics to Understand Developmental Processes and Cell Fate Decisions

Overview

Journal Mol Syst Biol

Specialty Molecular Biology

Date 2018 Apr 18

PMID 29661792

Citations 108

Authors

Jonathan A Griffiths

Antonio Scialdone

John C Marioni

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

High-throughput techniques have revolutionised biology, allowing for thorough and unbiased characterisation of the molecular states of biological systems. However, cellular decision-making is inherently a unicellular process to which "bulk" -omics techniques are poorly suited, as they capture ensemble averages of cell states. Recently developed single-cell methods bridge this gap, allowing high-throughput molecular surveys of individual cells. In this review, we cover core concepts of analysis of single-cell gene expression data and highlight areas of developmental biology where single-cell techniques have made important contributions. These include understanding of cell-to-cell heterogeneity, the tracing of differentiation pathways, quantification of gene expression from specific alleles, and the future directions of cell lineage tracing and spatial gene expression analysis.

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