International Journal of Medicine and Data

Pigenetic modifications play a crucial role in regulating gene expression, cell fate determination, and disease occurrence. Their spatiotemporal dynamic characteristics are closely related to cellular heterogeneity, which requires the use of appropriate analytical techniques for precise interpretation. Traditional homogeneous sample analysis methods are difficult to capture epigenetic regulatory differences at the single-cell level, while single-cell epigenetic imaging techniques have shown good applications in the analysis of cellular heterogeneity. With the development of this field, they have also achieved breakthroughs in spatial resolution and dynamic monitoring. This article systematically summarizes the single-cell epigenetic imaging methods developed in recent years based on optical microscopy technology, such as immunofluorescence imaging, in situ labeling fluorescence imaging based on nucleic acid amplification, and fluorescent protein imaging based on gene encoding. It briefly explains their imaging principles and focuses on the detection throughput performance, imaging resolution, and signal amplification performance of these methods. It also provides an overview of their applications in actual scientific research and clinical work, with the aim of providing references for the development of new single-cell epigenetic imaging methods and promoting the transformation and application of related technologies in the fields of disease mechanism analysis and epigenetic drug screening in biomedicine and precision medicine.

Single-cell imaging; Epigenetics; Immunofluorescence; Fluorescence imaging; Fluorescent protein; Progress