In Star Trek, Bones has instruments that scan your body, detects disease and then repairs. Sci Fi may be closer to reality than we think.
Who has heard of the Human Cell Atlas? It’s a project that represents a truly global initiative to achieve something truly remarkable in the history of human evolution: a map of the cellular geography of the body.
It’s goal resembles the dna genome project and aims do for the study of cells what was done for genetics in mapping definitive encyclopaedia of the cellular components of the human body. its cells, rather than its dna.
The Human Cell Atlas’s humble beginnings, decentralised organisation and scientific focus mean it has remained almost invisible and largely ignored. Whereas the Human Genome Project was backed by Big Pharma, the Cell Atlas lacks the allure of its predecessor. And yet, as most genetic diseases manifest in cellular abnormalities, the mapping project has far wider reach.
The body has 37.2trn cells. Our available technology cannot visualise and identify them all individually. The Cell Atlas sets out to identify and characterise every type of cell, and also where that cell type is located in the body—and not only in which organ, or even which tissue within an organ, but its location within a tissue.
The value of a cell atlas lies in facilitating our understanding how individual cells interact and operate within the body. The project requires extensive research, analysis, and collaboration among scientists from various disciplines to ensure accuracy and relevance. By combining histological data from across the board, researchers can create comprehensive maps of cellular features and thereby shed light on biological processes at the cellular level. This process, known as cell mapping,opens a fundamentally radical new pathway i to understanding disease processes and other biological phenomena. Cell atlases can also be used to target specific diseases and develop new therapies and treatments that manipulate molecular composition among specific cells. They are important resources for furthering our knowledge of the aging process of the tissue architecture and functions within the body. Ultimately, cell atlases provide a deeper understanding of the complexities of the biology of life itself.
The Cell Atlas project, which began in October 2016, had signed up 2,704 researchers from 1,483 institutes in 86 countries. Together, those scientists have examined 14,635 samples from 9,554 donors, and logged data from 120m cells—a number that is doubling every 180 days or so.
Cell mapping is an essential component of cell atlas development as it involves collecting data from multiple sources to create multi dimensional values for the 20,000 genetic variables with a cell.
The short cut to represent this in a single composite is to extract the cell’s mRNA, Followed on from the Covid vaccines which are mRNA based, the medical uses of the Cell Atlas lie cell engineering – that is , using genetically modified cells as therapies for targeted organs, the mass screening of potential drugs to evaluate their separate effects on particular cell types and the design of artificial organs for transplant.
The Human Cell Atlas will, in short, take us to where we have never gone before. Into the very nature of life itself.
