Research strategies for single‐cell transcriptome analysis in plant leaves
Zhixin Liu, Xiaole Yu, Aizhi Qin, Zihao Zhao, Yumeng Liu, Susu Sun, Hao Liu, Chenxi Guo, Rui Wu, Jincheng Yang, Mengke Hu, George Bawa, Xuwu Sun
Abstract
The recent and continuous improvement in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology has led to its emergence as an efficient experimental approach in plant research. However, compared with single-cell research in animals and humans, the application of scRNA-seq in plant research is limited by several challenges, including cell separation, cell type annotation, cellular function analysis, and cell-cell communication networks. In addition, the unavailability of corresponding reliable and stable analysis methods and standards has resulted in the relative decentralization of plant single-cell research. Considering these shortcomings, this review summarizes the research progress in plant leaf using scRNA-seq. In addition, it describes the corresponding feasible analytical methods and associated difficulties and problems encountered in the current research. In the end, we provide a speculative overview of the development of plant single-cell transcriptome research in the future.