2016年7月4日/生物谷BIOON/--在一项新的研究中，来自瑞典卡罗琳斯卡研究所和皇家理工学院等机构的研究人员开发出一种新的被称作空间转录组学（spatial transcriptomics）的高分辨率方法研究一种组织中哪些基因是有活性的。这种方法能够被用于所有类型的组织中，而且在临床前研究和癌症诊断中是有价值的。相关研究结果发表在2016年7月1日那期Science期刊上，论文标题为“Visualization and analysis of gene expression in tissue sections by spatial transcriptomics”。
Visualization and analysis of gene expression in tissue sections by spatial transcriptomics
Patrik L. Ståhl1,2,*, Fredrik Salmén2,*, Sanja Vickovic2,†, Anna Lundmark2,3,†, José Fernández Navarro1,2, Jens Magnusson1, Stefania Giacomello2, Michaela Asp2, Jakub O. Westholm4, Mikael Huss4, Annelie Mollbrink2, Sten Linnarsson5, Simone Codeluppi5,6, Åke Borg7, Fredrik Pontén8, Paul Igor Costea2, Pelin Sahlén2, Jan Mulder9, Olaf Bergmann1, Joakim Lundeberg2,‡, Jonas Frisén
Analysis of the pattern of proteins or messengerRNAs (mRNAs) in histological tissue sections is a cornerstone in biomedical research and diagnostics. This typically involves the visualization of a few proteins or expressed genes at a time. We have devised a strategy, which we call “spatial transcriptomics,” that allows visualization and quantitative analysis of the transcriptome with spatial resolution in individual tissue sections. By positioning histological sections on arrayed reverse transcription primers with unique positional barcodes, we demonstrate high-quality RNA-sequencing data with maintained two-dimensional positional information from the mouse brain and human breast cancer. Spatial transcriptomics provides quantitative gene expression data and visualization of the distribution of mRNAs within tissue sections and enables novel types of bioinformatics analyses, valuable in research and diagnostics.
