An international consortium of thousands of scientists is creating the Human Cell Atlas, a three-dimensional map of all the cells in the body. The goal is to understand all the cells that make up human tissues, organs and systems, which will enable multiple medical applications. This collection of cell maps is openly available for navigation at single-cell resolution, identified through omics analyses that reveal the tridimensional distribution of each cell.

An international consortium of thousands of scientists is creating the Human Cell Atlas, a three-dimensional map of all the cells in the body. The goal is to understand all the cells that make up human tissues, organs and systems, which will enable multiple medical applications. This collection of cell maps is openly available for navigation at single-cell resolution, identified through omics analyses that reveal the tridimensional distribution of each cell.

A new study helps explain the role of genetic variation in shaping gene regulation in the Indonesian archipelago, one of the most diverse regions in the world. “This study is the only study of splicing from Southeast Asian populations. There is basically no data from this part of the world,” study author Irene Gallego Romero told BioWorld. For drug discovery, most of the people that have historically participated in clinical trials are of European ancestry, and scientists are just beginning to study African populations to better understand genetic differences in these populations, said Romero, a population geneticist and biological anthropologist at the University of Melbourne.