The emerging landscape of spatial profiling technologies
Abstract
Improved scale, multiplexing and resolution are establishing spatial nucleic acid and protein profiling methods as a major pillar for cellular atlas building of complex samples, from tissues to full organisms. Emerging methods yield omics measurements at resolutions covering the nano- to microscale, enabling the charting of cellular heterogeneity, complex tissue architectures and dynamic changes during development and disease. We present an overview of the developing landscape of in situ spatial genome, transcriptome and proteome technologies, exemplify their impact on cell biology and translational research, and discuss current challenges for their community-wide adoption. Among many transformative applications, we envision that spatial methods will map entire organs and enable next-generation pathology.
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ST enables the investigation of biological patterns that might otherwise be hidden in other -omics technologies, such as scRNA-seq or bulk RNA-seq.
“ST enables the investigation of biological patterns that might otherwise be hidden in other -omics technologies, such as scRNA-seq or bulk RNA-seq.26,27”
From hdWGCNA identifies co-expression networks in high-dimensional transcriptomics data (2023) · cites this paper as [27]
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- Authors
- Moffitt, J. R., Lundberg, E., & Heyn, H.
- Affiliations
- Boston Children's Hospital (US)
- Science for Life Laboratory (SE)
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra (ES)
- Corresponding author
- Heyn, Holger
- Venue
- Nature Reviews Genetics
- Published
- 2022-07-20
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 741-759
- ISSN
- 1471-0056 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-0064
- OpenAlex
- W4286005528
- Cited by
- 419
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 93 · 2025: 107 · 2024: 108 · 2023: 96 · 2022: 15
- FWCI
- 8.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Nature Reviews Genetics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Cancer Institute (R21CA249728)
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM143277)
- National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (U01DK120447)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Chromatin Dynamics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Keywords
- spatial omics, spatial transcriptomics, spatial genomics, spatial proteomics, cellular heterogeneity, tissue structure
- MeSH terms
- Genome, Proteome, Gene Expression Profiling, Single-Cell Analysis, Transcriptome
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