Cells are the basic units of life, and subtle differences from normal functionalities may be enough to cause diseases. In the past decade, cell and molecular biologists are moving toward using “single cell” as the unit of analysis, enabling more detailed exploration of genomic and transcriptomic expression of cells in tissues; single cell sequencing is a vital tool to realize these research requirements.

In 2020, Nature selected spatially resolved transcriptomics as its Method of the Year. “Working with single cells is more like digging into a fruit salad than a smoothie,” says Hongkui Zeng, who directs the Allen Institute for Brain Science. The method is unlike traditional sequencings, which only provide an average expression of multiple cells, single cell sequencing brings a more fine-grained assessment of each cell’s transcriptome. With spatially resolved transcriptomics, researchers can have both transcriptomic data and positional context of target cells in a tissue.