Computational tool: From single cells to tissues and whole organisms

Organisms and tissues develop through rounds of cell division, differentiation and death. Sophie Seidel and Tanja Stadler from the Computational Evolution group devised a new computational tool that quantifies these developmental processes from genetic footprints in single cells. Their work may contribute to a deeper understanding of development of model organisms and tissues, which in turn, can advance our insights into human development.

16.11.2022 by Carolin Arndt Foppa

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phylogenetic-picature — Organisms (here the mouse) develop from a fertilized egg cell (leftmost cell) through rounds of cell division, differentiation and death. If we take cells from an organism at the present time and reconstruct the cell phylogeny, we can learn how these cells are related to each other. We can also learn how fast the cells divide and die, and what other cell types they preferentially differentiate into (here from the orange into the cyan cells). Figure partially created with BioRender.com.

Find original paper:

Seidel, S and T Stadler (2022) TiDeTree: A Bayesian phylogenetic framework to estimate single-cell trees and population dynamic parameters from genetic lineage tracing data. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. external pagehttps://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1844

Learn about the Computational Evolution lab led by Tanja Stadler.