Background: Cellular communication is an essential feature of multicellular organisms. Binding of ligands to their homologous receptors, which activate specific cell signaling pathways, is a basic type of cellular communication and intimately linked to many degeneration processes leading to diseases.
Main body: This study reviewed the history of ligand-receptor and presents the databases which store ligand-receptor pairs. The recently applications and research tools of ligand-receptor interactions for cell communication at single cell level by using single cell RNA sequencing have been sorted out.
Conclusion: The summary of the advantages and disadvantages of analysis tools will greatly help researchers analyze cell communication at the single cell level. Learning cell communication based on ligand-receptor interactions by single cell RNA sequencing gives way to developing new target drugs and personalizing treatment.
Keywords: Cell communication; Ligand-receptor interactions; Single cell RNA sequencing; Target therapy; Tumor microenvironment.