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Single-cell biology: beyond the sum of its parts

Nature Methods volume 17, pages 17–20 (2020)Cite this article

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The field of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has been paired with genomics, epigenomics, spatial omics, proteomics and imaging to achieve multimodal measurements of individual cellular phenotypes and genotypes. In its purest form, single-cell multimodal omics involves the simultaneous detection of multiple traits in the same cell. More broadly, multimodal omics also encompasses comparative pairing and computational integration of measurements made across multiple distinct cells to reconstruct phenotypes. Here I highlight some of the biological insights gained from multimodal studies and discuss the challenges and opportunities in this emerging field.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to J. Farrell, S. Mango and B. Raj for comments on the manuscript and to the US National Institutes of Health, the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the Allen Discovery Center for Cell Lineage Tracing, Harvard University and the University of Basel for support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biozentrum, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Alexander F. Schier

  2. Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Alexander F. Schier

  3. Allen Discovery Center for Cell Lineage Tracing, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Alexander F. Schier

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Correspondence to Alexander F. Schier.

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Schier, A.F. Single-cell biology: beyond the sum of its parts. Nat Methods 17, 17–20 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-019-0693-3

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