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Adefining shift in molecular biology over the past decade has been the application of whole genome and whole transcriptome sequencing methods to single cells. With advances in cell isolation and next generation sequencing, researchers no longer need to average out the signal from multiple cells in a population, but can instead study the DNA, RNA, proteins, and chromatin cell by cell.
Single-cell genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics studies have revealed just how much variation there is in gene and protein expression even between genetically identical cells in the same tissue. But most such studies examine only a single layer of information from each cell, which may give a skewed picture, says Pier Federico Gherardini, a biologist at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco. “You cannot just measure RNA and assume that things will look the same with proteins.”
Researchers have started to combine ...
