Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Oct 26, 2019; 11(10): 722-728
Published online Oct 26, 2019. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v11.i10.722
Applications of single cell RNA sequencing to research of stem cells
Xiao Zhang, Lei Liu
Xiao Zhang, Lei Liu, State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases and National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases and Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China
Author contributions: Zhang X contributed to the literature review, drafting and writing this paper as the first author. Liu L contributed to the revision and editing of the manuscript, and gave approval to the final version as the corresponding author.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81670951.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no potential conflicts of interest to report.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Lei Liu, MD, PhD, Professor, State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases and National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases and Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, No. 14, 3rd Section of Ren Min Nan Rd, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China. drliulei@163.com
Telephone: +86-28-85503406 Fax: +86-28-85582167
Received: May 5, 2019
Peer-review started: May 8, 2019
First decision: August 1, 2019
Revised: August 12, 2019
Accepted: September 11, 2019
Article in press: September 11, 2019
Published online: October 26, 2019
Processing time: 170 Days and 16.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has emerged as a powerful tool to explore cellular heterogeneity, provide new insights based on gene expression profiles of individual cells, reveal new cell subpopulations and predict developmental trajectories. It has been used in research of stem cells (SCs) in many fields, especially the study of heterogeneity and cell subpopulations in early embryonic development. This review aims to provide an overview of the applications of scRNA-seq to research of SCs.