Endocrinology of a Single Cell: Tools and Insights

Recent advances in single-cell (SC) technologies have enabled scientists to gain groundbreaking insights into cellular diversity, cell development, and cellular dynamics. In this chapter, we review recent SC technologies that address the key questions in the field of endocrine research, including characterization of cellular heterogeneity within a tissue, molecular classification of endocrine tumors, and analysis of signaling dynamics and stimulus response, such as hormone secretion. We provide examples of SC studies and highlight their main findings, focusing on recent discoveries on pancreatic β-cells and pituitary gonadotropes. Lastly, we discuss the pitfalls and limitations of SC approaches, as well as future avenues of research and technology development in this rapidly evolving field.