Review: Plant systems biology at the single-cell level

The establishment and enormous developments in -omics and systems biology over the last years have increased our understanding and ability to analyze complex biological processes at entire plant, organ or tissue levels. However, these arrays of datasets have the limitation of cellular complexity in terms of computational analysis and model predictions. Recent methodology and technical advances have opened new opportunities to enable biological analysis at single-cell or single-cell type resolution. This, when coupled to bioinformatic tools, has enhanced our knowledge of plant cells as systems. This review from Libault et al. gives an overview of the recent advances, current challenges, and future opportunities to dissect biological processes at high resolution. Studies in this direction will help us to understand conserved molecular processes, evolutionary relationships, and response to stress of preferentially expressed genes. Hence this emerging area in plant science will provide new insights into our understanding of plant cell behavior at the cellular level. (Summary by Amey Redkar) Trends Plant Sci. 10.1016/j.tplants.2017.08.006