The Trends of Single-Cell Analysis: A Global Study.

Hua Tian,Dan Xing,Bin Wang,Yuanyuan Zhu,Haifeng Liu,P Bryant Chase

doi:10.1155/2020/7425397

Abstract

Objective The field of single-cell analysis has rapidly grown worldwide, and a bibliometric analysis and visualization of data and publications pertaining to such single-cell research has the potential to offer insights into the development of this field over the past two decades while also highlighting future avenues of research. Methods Single-cell analysis-related studies published from 2000-2019 were identified through searches of the Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed databases, and corresponding bibliometric data were systematically compiled. Extracted data from each study included author names, country of origin, and affiliations. GraphPad Prism was used to analyze these data, while VOSviewer was used to perform global analyses of bibliographic coupling, coauthorship, cocitation, and co-occurrence. Results In total, 4,071 relevant studies were included in this analysis. The number of publications increased substantially with time, suggesting that single-cell analyses are becoming increasingly more prevalent in recent years. Studies from the USA had the greatest impact in this field, with higher H-index values and numbers of citations relative to other countries, whereas Israel exhibited the highest average number of citations per publication. Bibliographic coupling, coauthorship, cocitation, and co-occurrence analyses revealed that Analytical Chemistry was associated with the highest number of publications in this field, and the University of Stanford contributed the most to this field. The most cited study included in this analysis was published by Macosko et al. in 2015 in Cell. Co-occurrence analyses revealed that the most common single-cell research topics included “mechanistic studies,” “in vitro studies,” “in vivo studies,” and “fabrication studies.” Conclusions Single-cell analyses are a rapidly growing area of scientific interest, and higher volumes of publications in this field are expected in the coming years, particularly for studies conducting fabrication and in vivo single-cell analyses.

Highlights

Single-cell-based biological research is a complex but dynamic field [1, 2], enabling researchers to understand cellular phenotypes at single-cell resolution
The spatial organization of cells within tissues is known to reflect functional differences in cell fate and lineage [3], and single-cell analysis represents an attractive approach to understanding such cellular heterogeneity and to understand its association with physiological homeostasis or disease [4]. These single-cell approaches enable researchers to effectively analyze very rare cells including stem cells, circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and residual cells associated with a particular disease or therapeutic regimen [5]
Global contributions to the field of single-cell analysis research were arranged in a color-coded map (Figure 1(a)), revealing that the United States (USA) contributed the greatest number of articles to this field (1,630; 40.04%), followed by the People’s Republic of China (556; 13.66%), Germany (503; 12.36%), Japan (386; 9.48%), and England (290; 7.12%) (Figure 1(b))

Summary

Introduction

Single-cell-based biological research is a complex but dynamic field [1, 2], enabling researchers to understand cellular phenotypes at single-cell resolution. The spatial organization of cells within tissues is known to reflect functional differences in cell fate and lineage [3], and single-cell analysis represents an attractive approach to understanding such cellular heterogeneity and to understand its association with physiological homeostasis or disease [4]. These single-cell approaches enable researchers to effectively analyze very rare cells including stem cells, circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and residual cells associated with a particular disease or therapeutic regimen [5]. Single-cell analyses allow for the integration of data pertaining to cellular genotype and transcriptional activity, offering more detailed information than that provided by traditional analytical techniques [6]

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Discussion

Conclusion