The Human Cell Atlas

Abstract

The recent advent of methods for high-throughput single-cell molecular profiling has catalyzed a growing sense in the scientific community that the time is ripe to complete the 150-year-old effort to identify all cell types in the human body. The Human Cell Atlas Project is an international collaborative effort that aims to define all human cell types in terms of distinctive molecular profiles (such as gene expression profiles) and to connect this information with classical cellular descriptions (such as location and morphology). An open comprehensive reference map of the molecular state of cells in healthy human tissues would propel the systematic study of physiological states, developmental trajectories, regulatory circuitry and interactions of cells, and also provide a framework for understanding cellular dysregulation in human disease. Here we describe the idea, its potential utility, early proofs-of-concept, and some design considerations for the Human Cell Atlas, including a commitment to open data, code, and community.

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Affiliated Institutions

• Science for Life Laboratory SE
• University of California, Berkeley US
• Institute of Genetics and Cancer GB
• Medawar Building for Pathogen Research GB
• Harvard University US
• King's College London GB
• California Institute of Technology US
• Newcastle University GB
• KTH Royal Institute of Technology SE
• Helmholtz Zentrum München DE
• John Radcliffe Hospital GB
• University of Groningen NL
• The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center US
• University of Pennsylvania US
• Broad Institute US
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute US
• Allen Institute US
• Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai US
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München DE
• Technical University of Munich DE
• Karolinska Institutet SE
• University of Edinburgh GB
• Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (United States) US
• Babraham Institute GB
• Massachusetts General Hospital US
• European Bioinformatics Institute GB
• German Cancer Research Center DE
• QB3 US
• Broad Center US
• Allen Institute for Brain Science US
• University of Cape Town ZA
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology US
• Cancer Research UK Cambridge Center GB
• Novo Nordisk Foundation DK
• University Medical Center Utrecht NL
• MRC Human Immunology Unit GB
• Center for Systems Biology US
• The Netherlands Cancer Institute NL
• University of Zurich CH
• University of Cambridge GB
• Wellcome/MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute GB
• New York Genome Center US
• University of Oxford GB
• École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne CH
• University Medical Center Groningen NL
• Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard US
• Weizmann Institute of Science IL
• Oncode Institute NL
• Takara (United States) US
• Stanford University US
• Princess Máxima Center NL
• National Institute of Biomedical Genomics IN
• Wellcome Sanger Institute GB
• New York University US
• MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology GB
• University of California, San Francisco US
• Radboud University Medical Center NL
• Kettering University US
• Translational Therapeutics (United States) US
• Heidelberg University DE
• Radboud University Nijmegen NL
• Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research NL

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