Researchers post genetic profiles of half a million human immune cells on Human Cell Atlas online portal

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This is an amazing project: a plan to build the Google Maps of the human body, as The Atlantic put it.

MISSION of the HUMAN CELL ATLAS
To create comprehensive reference maps of all human cells—the fundamental units of life—as a basis for both understanding human health and diagnosing, monitoring, and treating disease.

A team of postdoctoral and research scientists at the Broad Institute has made a data set of half a million human immune cells openly accessible on a preview site that provides initial access to data for the Human Cell Atlasinitiative.

The data set, one of the largest of its kind, includes primary data and associated metadata from nearly 530,000 immune cells from umbilical cord blood of newborns and bone marrow of adults. Additional data sets were also provided by Wellcome Sanger Institute and collaborators.

“This is a wonderful example of science at its most open and collaborative,” said team co-leader Orit Rozenblatt-Rosen, an Institute Scientist at the Broad and director of the Klarman Cell Observatory (KCO).

This data lays the foundation for an immune cell atlas, an important first step in the Human Cell Atlas consortium’s goal of an initial draft atlas of 30 million cells covering many tissues. “The immune system is deeply complex, involved in many diseases, and distributed throughout our body. This data set will be critical to help unlock its secrets,” said Monika Kowalczyk, a hematologist who led the experimental team while a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Broad Core Institute Member Aviv Regev.

https://www.broadinstitute.org/news...n-human-immune-cells-human-cell-atlas-online?

https://www.humancellatlas.org