Understanding Disease Pathways Through Spatial Omics
Spatial omics refers to emerging technologies that allow researchers to examine biological molecules within intact tissues and cell populations at high resolution. By mapping biomolecules like DNA, RNA, proteins and metabolites onto precise spatial locations, spatial omics provides a powerful new means of understanding complex molecular interactions within living systems. This "spatial transcriptomics" approach offers significant advantages over traditional bulk analysis methods that average results across entire tissues.
Early Development of Spatial Techniques
The earliest spatial techniques involved fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), which enabled tagging RNA or DNA probes to specific sequences for microscopic visualization of gene expression patterns within intact cells. Later, microarray-based methods allowed profiling of RNA from distinct tissue regions. However, Spatial Omics approaches suffered from low throughput. More recent spatial omics platforms aim to overcome earlier limitations by enabling high resolution molecular mapping over entire tissue sections or single-cell populations.
Popular Spatial Omics Technologies
Several commercial platforms have emerged for spatial profiling at single-cell resolution. Slide-seq uses combinatorial barcoding to profile thousands of individual cells within intact tissues sections captured on a standard microscope slide. The 10x Genomics Visium platform embeds RNA-barcoded spatial beads within tissue sections prior to sequencing, assigning molecular profiles to exact locations. The Spatial Transcriptomics (ST) technology performs RNA-seq on arrayed spots within tissue sections, enabling mapping of gene expression landscapes. These techniques have greatly advanced the study of molecular gradients, cell types and pathways within normal and diseased tissues.
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