Nature Biotechnology: Unprecedented new tool for cell tissue localization

The study of the human body at the single-cell level has been boosted with the advent of a new tool that allows researchers to see not only how cells function, but also where they are located in tissues

The paper, published Jan.

The human body is made up of countless cell types, and previously undiscovered cell types are often discovered by research programs such as the Human Cell Atlas

But cell type isn't the only factor in healthy tissue function

Combining single-cell sequencing data with the desired spatial information has previously been impossible

In this study, researchers at the Sanger Institute applied cell localization techniques to several types of human and mouse tissues, providing three-dimensional data on the presence of cell types and where they are located

The mouse brain was divided into different regions, such as the cortex and thalamus, and cell-localization techniques were used to perform a more detailed analysis of astrocytes

One of the paper's senior authors, Dr Oliver Stiegel from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), said: "Cell localization enables the identification and mapping of previously undescribed astrocyte subsets in the mouse brain.

The rich data provided by cell2location also opens up new applications for single-cell sequencing in the field of pathology

One of the paper's senior authors, Dr Omar Bairakta from the Sanger Institute, said: "I'm very excited about the potential for cellular localization to change the way we view life at the molecular level

article title

cell2location maps fine-grained cell types in spatial transcriptomics