Deciphering the evolution of vertebrate immune cell types with single-cell RNA-seq
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Evolutionary Studies, Immunology
- Keywords
- adaptive immune system, transcriptomics, single-cell RNA sequencing, immune cell-type, vertebrate evolution, non-mammalian immune cell discovery
- Copyright
- © 2018 Carmona et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Deciphering the evolution of vertebrate immune cell types with single-cell RNA-seq. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26858v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26858v1
Abstract
Single-cell RNA-seq is revolutionizing our understanding of cell type heterogeneity in many fields of biology, ranging from neuroscience to cancer to immunology. In Immunology, one of the main promises of this approach is the ability to define cell types as clusters in the whole transcriptome space (i.e., without relying on specific surface markers), thereby providing an unbiased classification of immune cell types. So far, this technology has been mainly applied in mouse and human. However, technically it could be used for immune cell-type identification in any species without requiring the development and validation of species-specific antibodies for cell sorting. Here we review recent developments using single-cell RNA-seq to characterize immune cell populations in non-mammalian vertebrates, with a focus on zebrafish (Danio rerio). We advocate that single-cell RNA-seq technology is likely to provide key insights into our understanding of the evolution of the adaptive immune system.
Author Comment
Here we review recent developments using single-cell RNA-seq to characterize immune cell populations in non-mammalian vertebrates, with a focus on zebrafish