Our understanding of plant biology is increasingly being built upon studies using ‘omics and system biology approaches performed at the level of the entire plant, organ, or tissue. Although these approaches open new avenues to better understand plant biology, they suffer from the cellular complexity of the analyzed sample. Recent methodological advances now allow plant scientists to overcome this limitation and enable biological analyses of single-cells or single-cell-types. Coupled with the development of bioinformatics and functional genomics resources, these studies provide opportunities for high-resolution systems analyses of plant phenomena. In this review, we describe the recent advances, current challenges, and future directions in exploring the biology of single-cells and single-cell-types to enhance our understanding of plant biology as a system.

我们对植物生物学的理解越来越多地基于在整个植物，器官或组织水平上使用组学和系统生物学方法进行的研究。尽管这些方法为更好地理解植物生物学开辟了新途径，但它们却遭受了所分析样品的细胞复杂性的困扰。现在，最新的方法学进展使植物科学家可以克服这一限制，并能够对单细胞或单细胞类型进行生物学分析。加上生物信息学和功能基因组学资源的发展，这些研究为植物现象的高分辨率系统分析提供了机会。在这篇评论中，我们描述了最近的进展，当前的挑战，