The first project of its kind, and as ambitious in scope as the Human Genome Project — which catalogued the first full human DNA sequence — the Human Cell Atlas aims to chart the types and properties of all human cells, across all tissues and organs, to build a reference map of the healthy human body.
The meeting, convened by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Wellcome Trust, brings international experts together to decide on the elements of the first phase of the Human Cell Atlas initiative.
By making the Atlas freely available to scientists all over the world, scientists hope to transform research into our understanding of human development and the progression of diseases such as asthma, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. In the future, the reference map could also point the way to new diagnostic tools and treatments.
A few years ago, measuring this complex and extensive information would have been impossible, but recent technological advances in the field of
