Emerging high resolution spatial transcriptomic technologies in kidney research

The spatial organization of cells, including their arrangement relative to neighboring cells and extracellular matrix (ECM) components, plays a crucial role in dictating cell behavior and tissue function.Given the kidney's intricate anatomical organization with a wide diversity of specialized cell types, understanding the spatial relationships between these cells and how they interact to determine function is pivotal.Recently new technologies have been developed to quantify gene expression in space called spatially resolved transcriptomics, or simply ST, which enables the in situ profiling of gene expression while preserving tissue integrity.The rapid advancement and current commercial availability of ST techniques are already leading to significant new discoveries in kidney health and disease, heralding a new era in nephrology research.ST technologies are categorized into two main approaches based on the underlying methods for detecting mRNA transcripts, each with unique strengths and limitations 1,2 (Fig. 1).The first approach involves capturing mRNA molecules from permeabilized