Single cells make big data: New challenges and opportunities in transcriptomics

Abstract

Recent technological advances have enabled unprecedented insight into transcriptomics at the level of single cells. Single cell transcriptomics enables the measurement of transcriptomic information of thousands of single cells in a single experiment. The volume and complexity of resulting data make it a paradigm of big data. Consequently, the field is presented with new scientific and, in particular, analytical challenges where currently no scalable solutions exist. At the same time, exciting opportunities arise from increased resolution of single-cell RNA sequencing data and improved statistical power of ever growing datasets. Big single cell RNA sequencing data promises valuable insights into cellular heterogeneity which may significantly improve our understanding of biology and human disease. This review focuses on single cell transcriptomics and highlights the inherent opportunities and challenges in the context of big data analytics.