One cell at a time

摘要

Next-generation DNA sequencing has revolutionized the field of cancer genomics. Although this sequencing can identify the most frequent mutation in a population of cells, it struggles to resolve the mutational diversity and multiple genomes of the individual cells that comprise a tumour. Achieving DNA sequencing down to the resolution of a single cell has been a long-held dream for understanding the cellular heterogeneity that is inherent in many complex biological systems and, in particular, for delineating the mixture of genomes in human cancers. On page 155 of this issue, Wang et al. report an innovative sequencing method, termed nuc-seq, that achieves almost complete sequencing of whole genomes in single cells.