Single-cell multi-omics in the medicinal plant Catharanthus roseus: a new era of next generation therapeutics

Developments in single-cell omics have enormous potential to revolutionize plant metabolic engineering and gene discovery. Additionally, this might pave a new path for next-generation therapeutics and stress alleviation in plants. The medicinal plant species Catharanthus roseus produces the natural product monoterpene indole alkaloid (MIAs), through a multistep biochemical activity. The high-throughput single-cell RNA-sequencing followed by semi-quantitative single-cell metabolomics showed MIA biosynthesis with distinct metabolite profiles across the organs. Therefore, understanding the function of gene/s and their product is necessary to find all the candidates in a complex metabolic circuit. In this commentary, we focused on the advances in single-cell multi-omic technologies in C. roseus about the methods illustrating cell states and the metabolites.