[Research advances on application of single-cell RNA sequencing in islet cell biology]

After the first single-cell RNA sequencing of human islet in 2016, a large number of analysis of RNA sequencing at single-cell level on mouse and human islets emerged, which has brought new progress to the research of islet cell biology. It has been proved that single-cell RNA sequencing can characterize rare types of endocrine cells, find the cellular heterogeneity of typical endocrine cells and new cell subtypes, analyze the differences of endocrine cells among species, and describe different states of various types of islet cells in developmental processes and metabolic diseases more accurately. Although the detection efficiency of single-cell RNA sequencing for low abundance transcripts is relatively low at present, with the improvement of technology and the progress of analytical methods, this technology will undoubtedly become a powerful tool to explore the cellular heterogeneity, development, and biological characteristics of metabolic diseases.