The Human Cell Atlas is an international collaborative research consortium that is mapping all cell types in the healthy body, across time from development to adulthood, and eventually to old age. Creating this comprehensive reference map of human cells is transforming our understanding of health and disease, to drive major advances in healthcare and medicine worldwide.
Cells are the building blocks of the human body, but we still do not know all the types of cells that create human anatomy. We need maps of all the different cells, their molecular characteristics and where they are located, to understand how the human body works and what goes wrong in disease.
Using cutting-edge single cell and spatial genomics at massive scale, combined with powerful computing and AI methods, HCA researchers are uncovering the intricate details of how the genes in our cells shape life.
Creating the Human Cell Atlas is an enormous undertaking, larger even than the Human Genome Project, and is revolutionising our understanding of the 37.2 trillion cells in the human body. If the Human Genome Project gave us the “book of life”, the Human Cell Atlas captures how each cell in the body reads this book. It is only possible now thanks to global collaboration, technological and computational breakthroughs, and science at great scale.
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