Single-cell omics sequencing technologies: the long-read generation

Over the past decade, single-cell omics sequencing technologies have revolutionized biological and medical research and deepened our knowledge of cellular heterogeneities in life activities at the genomic, epigenomic, and transcriptomic levels. Concurrently, single-molecule long-read sequencing (SMS) technologies have also made amazingly rapid progress. In recent years, the convergence of these two exciting fields has injected new vitality into the generation of novel insights in genomics (repetitive elements, structural variations), epigenomics (allele-specific epigenetic modifications), and transcriptomics (alternative splicing) at the single-cell level, providing powerful new tools and opening new opportunities for biomedical fields. In this review, we introduce SMS platform-based single-cell genome, epigenome, and transcriptome sequencing technologies - the current situation and future perspectives.