Integrative multi-omics approaches to explore immune cell functions: Challenges and opportunities

Xu Wang; Dian Fan; Yuqing Yang; Ryan C Gimple; Shengtao Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106359

Integrative multi-omics approaches to explore immune cell functions: Challenges and opportunities

iScience. 2023 Mar 9;26(4):106359. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106359. eCollection 2023 Apr 21.

Authors

Xu Wang¹, Dian Fan¹, Yuqing Yang¹, Ryan C Gimple², Shengtao Zhou¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Key Laboratory of Birth Defects and Related Diseases of Women and Children of MOE and State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, West China Second Hospital, Sichuan University and Collaborative Innovation Center, Chengdu, P. R. China.
² Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA.

Abstract

As modern biological sciences evolve from investigation of individual molecules and pathways to growing emphasis on global and systems-based processes, increasing efforts have focused on combining the study of genomics with that of the other omics technologies, including epigenomics, transcriptomics, quantitative proteomics, global analyses of post-translational modifications (PTMs) and metabolomics, to characterize specific biological or pathological processes. In addition, emerging genome-wide functional screening technologies further help researchers identify key regulators of immune functions. Derived from these multi-omics technologies, single cell sequencing analysis on multiple layers offers an overview of intra-tissue or intra-organ immune cell heterogeneity. In this review, we summarize advances in multi-omics tools to explore immune cell functions and applications of these multi-omics approaches in the analysis of clinical immune disorders, aiming to provide an outlook on the potential opportunities and challenges that these technologies pose in future investigation in the field of immunology.

Keywords: Bioinformatics; Cell biology; Immunology.

Publication types

Review