Application of single-cell sequencing in infectious diseases and microbiology: a review

Abstract:

Single-cell sequencing is becoming an essential tool for the basic research of biology, which brings revolutionary insights for us to understand biological phenomena. Many infectious diseases involve diversified functions of immune cells with great heterogeneity. Compared with high-throughput sequencing, the emerging single-cell transcriptome sequencing enables researchers to explore immune cell heterogeneity during infection, to fully excavate molecular information from precious clinical samples, and to obtain the genetic information of unculturable pathogenic microorganisms. Herein, we review the application status of single-cell sequencing in the research on infectious diseases and pathogenic microorganisms and make a brief prospect of this technology.