Single cell multi-omics sequencing platform to understand the building blocks of life.

为了理解生命的规则，了解健康和延长健康寿命，或提高农业的可持续性，有必要在细胞分辨率上清楚地解决和描述生命系统。这是一个重大的挑战，因为生物体通常是由大量具有不同性质的细胞组成的，这些细胞彼此之间有复杂的相互作用，直到最近，还没有技术可以实现这样的分辨率。这个单细胞多组学表型平台允许来自任何组织或生物体的细胞在单细胞水平上进行探索。该平台可以采集大量细胞（例如组织样本、活组织检查、用特定化合物处理的细胞），并在确定每个细胞的特性之前给每个细胞一个独特的条形码标签。然后，可以对每个细胞进行一系列分子特性的探索，例如确定基因组的序列或结构、细胞中表达的基因以及细胞或细胞表面表达的蛋白质。这个提议的平台将使研究人员能够探索复杂生物体中特征如何决定的复杂细胞结构，并阐明它们如何进化。该平台促进的研究范围涉及的问题包括：沟通行为如何在大脑中编码；身体如何控制运动功能以及运动神经元疾病中出现的问题；遗传机制如何影响发育、生育和亲代供给；生物体如何在进化过程中适应极端条件；鸟类筑巢的神经控制基因组结构在指导组织或动物身体形成中的作用；癌症进展及抗癌药物对机体的影响；免疫系统如何在健康和疾病中发挥作用；神经发育正常与异常；提高作物产量；开发新的数据分析计算方法。因此，这一尖端技术平台将促进在各种关键研究领域向前迈出一大步，这将影响进化、发育、生理学、行为、医学、农业和环境可持续性等关键研究领域。

It is necessary to clearly resolve and describe living systems at a cellular resolution, in order to understand the rules of life, to understand health and increase healthy lifespans, or to improve sustainability in agriculture. This presents a major challenge as organisms are often composed of huge numbers of cells with very different properties that have complex interactions with each other, and until recently there was no technology that would allow such resolution. This single cell multi-omics phenotyping platform allows cells from any tissue or organism to be explored at a single cell level. The platform makes it possible to take a large collection of cells (e.g. a tissue sample, biopsies, cells treated with specific compounds) and give each cell a unique barcode label before determining its properties. Each cell can then be explored for a range of molecular properties such as determining the sequence or structure of the genome, the genes that are expressed in the cell, and the proteins expressed in the cell or at the surface of the cell.The proposed platform will allow researchers to explore the intricate cellular architecture that underlies how traits are determined in complex organisms, and shed light on how they evolved. The range of research facilitated by this platform addresses questions including: how communication behaviour is encoded in the brain; how the body controls motor functions and what goes wrong in motor neuron disease; how genetic mechanisms influence development, fertility and parental provisioning; how organisms adapt to extreme conditions over evolution; neural control of nest building in birds; the role of genome structure in directing the forms tissues or animal bodies take; cancer progression and the effect of cancer drugs on the body; how the immune system functions in health and disease; normal and abnormal neurodevelopment; improving crop production; and developing new computational methods for data analyses. This cutting-edge technology platform would therefore facilitate a massive step forward in a diverse range of key research areas, that will impact crucial research fields across evolution, development, physiology, behaviour, medicine, agriculture and environmental sustainability.