时空转录组研究进展

Research Progress of Spatiotemporal Transcriptomes

时空异质性是造成不同组织功能差异的关键因素,在细胞命运调控过程中发挥重要作用。时空转录组(stRNA-seq)是一项将定量转录组与高分辨率组织成像相结合的新兴组学技术。它将表达数据锚定到目标器官或组织的物理图上,并以无偏见的生物信息学方式对组织切片和细胞层进行分子表征,反映特定细胞内基因的时空异质性表达丰度。受益于高通量测序技术的快速发展,时空转录组为探究各类细胞基因表达的时空异质性提供了新的实验思路和方法。该文介绍了时空转录组的原理和发展进程,以及不同时空转录组的技术特点和优劣,总结了时空转录组在动物、植物和微生物中的应用,可为今后系统开展时空转录组研究提供理论参考。

Spatiotemporal heterogeneity is a key factor for functional differentiation in different tissues and plays an im-portant role in regulating cell fate.Spatiotemporal transcriptomic sequencing(stRNA-seq)is an emerging omics technology that combines quantitative transcriptome with high-resolution tissue imaging.It anchors expression data to the physical map of a target organ or tissue and molecularly characterizes tissue sections and cell layers via unbiased bioinformatic analysis,which reflects the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of gene expression abundances within specific cells.Benefiting from the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing,the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of gene expression in various cells can be explored by new experimental approaches.In this review,we first briefly introduce the principle and development process of stRNA-seq,providing readers an overview on the characteristics,advantages and disadvantages of different stRNA-seq techniques.Then,we summarize the applications of stRNA-seq in animals,plants and microor-ganisms,which provide theoretical references for the systematic research of stRNA-seq in future.