Sanger Human Cell Atlasing Project. Defining Human Cells in Terms of Gene Expression, Physiological States,Developmental Trajectories, and Location.

Previous methods for quantifying molecular states of cells included microarray and standard RNA-seq analysis on a tissue section (RNA-seq is a technique to look at the activity of all the genes in a cell). These methods estimate the activity of any given gene by averaging the signal from millions of cells. Given the heterogeneity of cell populations (i.e.how uniform they are), measurement of the mean values of signals overlooks the internal interactions and differences within a cell population that may be crucial for maintaining normal tissue function and facilitating disease progression.

The Sanger Human Cell Atlasing project will adopt various genomic approaches that will provide genome-wide information in a single experiment. This project aims to scale up the single cell genomics and high-throughput highly multiplex spatial gene expression profiling approaches. Coupled with powerful computational methods, this strategy will produce a comprehensive and systematic reference map of human cells, providing a fundamental blueprint of cell states for both basic biological research and clinical practice.