单细胞测序技术在肝脏疾病的应用与展望

Application and Prospects of Single-Cell Sequencing in Liver Disease

新兴的单细胞测序技术能够从单细胞水平揭示基因组、转录组和表观遗传学等分子水平发生的基因变异与表观修饰状态,也可用于鉴定新的细胞类型和表面标记物。这将帮助人们探明疾病发生时细胞基因、转录或表观修饰方面的变化,了解细胞之间的联系,以及深入理解肿瘤异质性。目前,单细胞测序技术已用于多种疾病的研究,其在肝脏疾病,包括肝硬化、肝癌中已有相关成果。于此,综述了单细胞测序技术在肝脏发育及肝病中的应用,讨论了肝脏疾病发生的内在机制以及该技术仍存在的问题,提出可能的解决方案,如发展三维单细胞测序技术将更能帮助人们深刻理解肝脏疾病发生机制。

Emerging single-cell sequencing is a potent technique,which can not only reveal mutations on genomics,transcriptomics and epigenetic modification at the molecular level but also be used to identify new cell types and surface markers.It can also help to detect changes in cell genes,transcriptomics or epigenetic modifications when a disease occurs,to understand the interactions among cells as well as to comprehensively understand tumor heterogeneity.Currently,single-cell sequencing has been applied to the studies on many diseases,and achievements on liver diseases including cirrhosis and liver cancer to some accomplishments are reported.Herein,the applications of singlecell sequencing in liver development and liver diseases are reviewed,underlying mechanisms of liver diseases and the issues of this technology are discussed,and the feasible resolutions are proposed,for instance,developing 3D single-cell sequencing technology may help us to deeply understand the mechanisms of liver deseases.