Until recently, trying to study key traits of cells from people and other animals often meant analyzing bulk samples of tissue, producing a mushed-up average of results from many cell types. In recent years, however, scientists have developed techniques that let them directly study the DNA codes, the activity of genes and other traits of individual cells.
A scientist at the NY Genome Center in New York demonstrates equipment used in single-cell RNA analysis on Sept. 26, 2018. NEW YORK -- Did you hear what happened when Bill Gates walked into a bar? Everybody there immediately became millionaires -- on average.
Until recently, trying to study key traits of cells from people and other animals often meant analyzing bulk samples of tissue, producing a mushed-up average of results from many cell types. It was like trying to learn about a banana by studying a strawberry-blueberry-orange-banana smoothie. In fact, the journal Science named the techniques that allow single-cell tracking of gene activity over time in developing organisms and organs as its "breakthrough of the year" for 2018. Its announcement declared, "The single-cell revolution is just starting."Even complicated animals like us are really just massive communities of cells, each taking on a particular role and working with its neighbours.
A study found a pattern of gene activity in some melanoma cells that let them resist immunotherapy, the practice of unleashing the body's immune system on cancer. That might lead to finding a way to render those cells vulnerable. At the MD Anderson Cancer Center of the University of Texas, Nicholas Navin uses single-cell DNA studies to reveal different patterns of mutations in various cells of a single tumour. That lets him reconstruct when and where those mutations appeared as the tumour evolved from benign cells. And he can identify cells that contain combinations of mutations that make them the most lethal.
The gene map led to identifying thousands of genetic variants that raise or lower the risk of many diseases. But to turn that into therapies, scientists have to know in which cells those variants act, she said. And to run down those cells in the human body, "we have to map all of them."
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