From a single cell to 1.2 million: scientists successfully create the largest cellular "family tree” for a mammal

Amazing stuff!

"... Scientists used a technology called DNA Typewriter to reconstruct most of the cell lineage of a developing mouse, mapping how more than 1.28 million individual cells emerged from the first cell division to form tissues and organs. ..."

From the abstract:

"Mammalian biology unfolds over time, within tissues and organs opaque to our eyes and instruments.

We applied DNA Typewriter, a sequential molecular recorder, to record the cell lineage of a mouse over nearly two weeks of development.

From one embryo, we reconstruct a time-calibrated, parsimony-supported, zygote-rooted phylogeny of 1.28 million transcriptionally profiled cells.

A burst of editing unequivocally marks the daughters of the first cleavage, which serve as inline replicates.

We quantify clonal dominance arising during gastrulation. Tree siblings share cell type far above chance; heterotypic siblings mark terminal differentiations. Temporal sweeps of clade co-occurrence recover a dated hierarchy of cell-type couplings; imputed labels for internal nodes recapitulate known state paths.

A lineage-anchored ontogeny of mammalian development, long out of reach, is coming into view."

From a single cell to 1.2 million: scientists successfully create the largest cellular "family tree” for a mammal "The new findings could provide valuable insights into birth defects and cancer"

A DNA Typewriter records the cell lineage history of a mouse, from zygote to late organogenesis (no public access)

A DNA Typewriter records the cell lineage history of a mouse, from zygote to late organogenesis (preprint, open access)

Circular lineage tree of a 13-day-old mouse embryo originating from a single cell at the center expanding outward over developmental time. Cells derived from the first cell division are marked in blue or red (credit: Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology)