Table 2 Advantages and disadvantages of several single cell-analytic methods

Single-cell mass cytometry

Detect multiple protein markers simultaneously

Providing only a coarse level of resolution

[92, 93]

Single-cell RNA sequencing

Characterize the transcriptomes of cell types in different tissues and identifying their transcriptional signatures

Initial amounts of RNA obtained from a single cell are low

Exhibiting higher levels of noise and more zero values

[94, 96]

Single-cell proteomics

Capture proteomic information from individual cells

Rich in information

Multicellular Single-cell proteomics with high sensitivity, specificity and low cost needs to be developed

[97,98,99]