Scientists launched a global initiative to map out and describe every cell in the human body in a vast atlas that could transform researcher's understanding of human development and disease.
The atlas , which is likely to take more than a decade to complete, aims to chart the types and properties of all human cells across all tissues and organs and build a reference map of the healthy human body, the scientists said.
Cells are fundamental to understanding the biology of all health and disease , but scientists can not yet say how many we have , how many different types there are, or how they differ from one organ to another .
"The human cell atlas initiative is the beginning of a new era of cellular understanding ,"Sarah Teichmann , head of cellular genetics at Britain's Sanger institute told.
"We will discover new cell types , find how cells change across time during development and disease, and gain a better understanding of biology,." she said.
By making the atlas - essentially a vast data base of cellular detail- freely available to scientists the world over, the scientists hope to transform research into human development and the progression of diseases such as asthma ,Alzheimer's and cancer.
The human body is made of trillions of of cells - the fundamental unit of life- Which divide, grow and take on distinct functions in the embryo , eventually leading to different cell types such as skin cells,neurons, or fat cells .
Until recently , scientific knowledge of cells has been limited to what can be found out by looking at them under microscopes or by genetically analyzing clumps of hundreds or thousands of cells and finding their average properties .But technological advances in a field known as single - cell genomics means researchers can now separate individual cells from different tissues and organs , analyze their properties and measure and describe which molecules are produced in each.
"We now have the tools to understand what we are composed of ,which allow us to learn how our bodies work and uncover how all these elements malfunction in disease,"said Aviv Regev of Broad Institute , who is working on the initiative.
"We believe a successful description of all the cells in the healthy human body will impact almost every aspect biology and medicine in decades to come.,"
According to Sten Linnarsson , a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm ,the atlas could prove invaluable for a disease like Parkinson's , which is caused by the steady loss of neurons that produce a chemical called dopamine in the brain .One hope for a future therapy is to grow fresh dopamine -making cells in the lab , and then inject them into the brain.A cell atlas would help reassure scientists they had grown the right cells to implant.
The atlas , which is likely to take more than a decade to complete, aims to chart the types and properties of all human cells across all tissues and organs and build a reference map of the healthy human body, the scientists said.
Cells are fundamental to understanding the biology of all health and disease , but scientists can not yet say how many we have , how many different types there are, or how they differ from one organ to another .
"The human cell atlas initiative is the beginning of a new era of cellular understanding ,"Sarah Teichmann , head of cellular genetics at Britain's Sanger institute told.
"We will discover new cell types , find how cells change across time during development and disease, and gain a better understanding of biology,." she said.
By making the atlas - essentially a vast data base of cellular detail- freely available to scientists the world over, the scientists hope to transform research into human development and the progression of diseases such as asthma ,Alzheimer's and cancer.
The human body is made of trillions of of cells - the fundamental unit of life- Which divide, grow and take on distinct functions in the embryo , eventually leading to different cell types such as skin cells,neurons, or fat cells .
Until recently , scientific knowledge of cells has been limited to what can be found out by looking at them under microscopes or by genetically analyzing clumps of hundreds or thousands of cells and finding their average properties .But technological advances in a field known as single - cell genomics means researchers can now separate individual cells from different tissues and organs , analyze their properties and measure and describe which molecules are produced in each.
"We now have the tools to understand what we are composed of ,which allow us to learn how our bodies work and uncover how all these elements malfunction in disease,"said Aviv Regev of Broad Institute , who is working on the initiative.
"We believe a successful description of all the cells in the healthy human body will impact almost every aspect biology and medicine in decades to come.,"
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