Babbage from The Economist (subscriber edition) The Human Cell Atlas: mapping the body's building blocks
Dec 4, 2024
Join Sarah Teichmann, a leading researcher from the University of Cambridge, and Muzlifah Haniffa, head of Cellogenomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, as they dive into the revolutionary Human Cell Atlas project. They discuss the astonishing diversity of human cells and how cutting-edge AI and sequencing technologies are enabling scientists to map these cells meticulously. The conversation also explores the potential for creating digital twins for predicting treatment responses and the exciting future of lab-grown organs in medicine.
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Human Cell Atlas vs. Genome Project
- Scientists at the Sanger Institute helped decipher the first human genome, now working on the Human Cell Atlas.
- The atlas catalogs every cell type, a more ambitious project than the genome.
Thousands of Cell Subtypes
- We know the basic cell types and organ locations, but there are thousands of cell subtypes.
- Better techniques reveal these subtypes, offering insights into body function.
Cell Function and Gene Activity
- Cells might look identical under a microscope, yet function differently.
- Examining gene activity reveals these functional differences.