Power of Transcriptomics in Lung Biology

El Mdawar, Marie-Belle Pennycuick Adam Lazarus Kyren A.

The lung consists of a plethora of cellular components working in concert to protect us against a variety of pathogens. This unique complexity poses a challenge to traditional transcriptomic approaches as averaging out signals across an intricate organ dampens individual cell type contributions. Technologies that allow transcriptomic level measurements at a single cell level, such as single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) have enabled an unbiased survey of the organ during homeostasis and disease, while preserving intricate cellular heterogeneity. The utility of scRNAseq in respiratory science has been widely embraced over the past few years with key discoveries including the identification of rare cell types, new cell states associated with lung diseases, and a system wide expression of key severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov2) receptors. Global single cell consortiums such as the Human Cell Atlas and LungMap have provided collaborative platforms that are crucial for large scale analysis, and they have emerged as important facilitators to further our understanding of lung biology. The rapid evolution of this technology will enable us to broaden the restraints of our knowledge leading to exciting discoveries that we currently see impossible.