The landscape of cell–cell communication through single-cell transcriptomics

Cell-cell communication is a fundamental process that shapes biological tissue. Historically, studies of cell-cell communication have been feasible for one or two cell types and a few genes. With the emergence of single-cell transcriptomics, we are now able to examine the genetic profiles of individual cells at unprecedented scale and depth. The availability of such data presents an exciting opportunity to construct a more comprehensive description of cell-cell communication. This review discusses the recent explosion of methods that have been developed to infer cell-cell communication from non-spatial and spatial single-cell transcriptomics, two promising technologies which have complementary strengths and limitations. We propose several avenues to propel this rapidly expanding field forward in meaningful ways.