Extracellular vesicle-derived miRNA-mediated cell–cell communication inference for single-cell transcriptomic data with miRTalk

Abstract MicroRNAs are released from cells in extracellular vesicles (EVs), representing an essential mode of cell–cell communication (CCC) via a regulatory effect on gene expression. Single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies have ushered in an era of elucidating CCC at single-cell resolution. Herein,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xin Shao, Lingqi Yu, Chengyu Li, Jingyang Qian, Xinyu Yang, Haihong Yang, Jie Liao, Xueru Fan, Xiao Xu, Xiaohui Fan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2025-04-01
Series:Genome Biology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-025-03566-x
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract MicroRNAs are released from cells in extracellular vesicles (EVs), representing an essential mode of cell–cell communication (CCC) via a regulatory effect on gene expression. Single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies have ushered in an era of elucidating CCC at single-cell resolution. Herein, we present miRTalk, a pioneering approach for inferring CCC mediated by EV-derived miRNA-target interactions (MiTIs). The benchmarking against simulated and real-world datasets demonstrates the superior performance of miRTalk, and the application to four disease scenarios reveals the in-depth MiTI-mediated CCC mechanisms. Collectively, miRTalk can infer EV-derived MiTI-mediated CCC with scRNA-seq data, providing new insights into the intercellular dynamics of biological processes.
ISSN:1474-760X