External audit reliance issues on the internal audit function (IAF) are increasingly important in financial auditing, yet its application in audit engagements lags behind other applications. Despite the belief that audit reliance will shape auditing in the future, limited and intervalley publications explore this transformative potential. This paper investigates the increasing importance of external audit reliance issues in financial auditing. It investigates the use of the IAF in external audit reliance decisions and its potential to enhance audit quality, process transparency, and stakeholders' credibility. Through a systematic literature review of 68 scientific articles from 1984 to 2022, factors influencing external auditors' dependence on the IAF are analyzed, including IAF work quality, assistance type, organizational factors, customer pressure, and business risk. The review highlights the IAF's crucial role in improving financial reporting integrity and external audit effectiveness. However, the challenges that allowed external auditors to decide whether to rely on the works of IAF like limited disclosures and accessible data hinder assessing IAF reliance effects, leading to information asymmetry that may impact stakeholder confidence. The paper discusses implications, limitations, and future research directions to explore technology adoption and optimize audit practices, promoting transparency in the audit process.

The snATAC + snRNA platform allows epigenomic profiling of open chromatin and gene expression with single-cell resolution. The most critical assay step is to isolate high-quality nuclei to proceed with droplet-base single nuclei isolation and barcoding. With the increasing popularity of multiomic profiling in various fields, there is a need for optimized and reliable nuclei isolation methods, mainly for human tissue samples. Herein we compared different nuclei isolation methods for cell suspensions, such as peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC, n=18) and a solid tumor type, ovarian cancer (OC) (n=18), derived from debulking surgery. Nuclei morphology and sequencing output parameters were used to evaluate the quality of preparation. Our results show that NP-40 detergent-based nuclei isolation yields better sequencing results than collagenase tissue dissociation for OC, significantly impacting cell identification and analysis. Given the utility of applying such techniques to frozen samples, we also tested frozen preparation and digestion (n=6). A paired comparison between frozen and fresh samples validated the quality of both specimens. Finally, we demonstrate the reproducibility of scRNA and snATAC + snRNA platform, by comparing the gene expression profiling of PBMC. Our results highlight how the choice of nuclei isolation methods is critical for obtaining quality data in multiomic assays. It also shows that the measurement of expression between scRNA and snRNA is comparable and effective for cell type identification.