Figure 2.

Main steps in a potential application of scRNA-seq for functional and ecological studies on natural communities of microbial eukaryotes. (a) Isolation of single cells from environmental samples. (b) Sequencing of single-cell full-length transcripts. (c) Grouping of single cells into taxonomic clusters based on transcriptome similarity. (d) Cell clusters taxonomic assignment based on database searches with the cluster composite transcriptome. (e) Downstream analysis, including community components, diversity of physiological states or cell types of a particular organism, or patterns of interactions (symbiosis, pathogenicity, predation, etc.) between two or more species. (Online version in colour.)