Cell topic!

On the evening of May 4th, Shenzhen BGI Life Sciences Research Institute (hereinafter referred to as BGI Research Institute) jointly released the world's first spatiotemporal maps of life on the official website of Cell Press in the form of a special topic of the Spatiotemporal Omics Consortium (STOC)

Using Stereo-seq, a spatiotemporal omics technology independently developed by BGI, called the "Super Wide-angle Ten-Gigapixel Life Camera", the researchers mapped the embryonic development or development of four model organisms of mouse, zebrafish, Drosophila, and Arabidopsis for the first time.

Stereo-seq technology can simultaneously "photograph" the gene information and spatial position of each cell in the tissue.

"Through Stereo-seq technology, for the first time, humans have realized the drawing of a panoramic spatiotemporal map of life with a spatial resolution of 500 nanometers

In order to promote the wide application of spatio-temporal omics in various fields of life sciences, BGI and other institutions have launched the spatio-temporal omics alliance, which is an international scientific alliance consisting of researchers from 16 countries including Harvard University, Cambridge University, and Oxford University.

The human body has 37 trillion cells, 100 times the number of stars in the Milky Way

In the 17th century, we first saw the microscopic structure of life - the cell - through a microscope

"The advent of spatiotemporal omics technology has enabled a comprehensive mapping of the cellular 'map' of life in time and space, allowing us to observe the distribution of molecules and cells in normal and disease states at cellular and even subcellular resolutions and the interaction between cells, truly realizing the understanding of function from the perspective of high-precision structure, which will greatly promote our comprehensive understanding of the complexity of life and human diseases

The researchers used this "ultra-wide-angle 10-gigapixel life camera" to "take" multiple "photographs" every day during the 9.

Robinow syndrome is a typical birth defect with clinical manifestations of abnormal facial and limb development (such as cleft lip and palate), and its associated genes have been identified clinically, but how this gene causes these abnormalities is unknown

"Thanks to the large field of view of Stereo-seq technology, researchers can analyze and study tissues at very high resolution and sequencing depth on developing mouse embryos," said Spatiotemporal Alliance member and co-author of the Cell paper Professor Patrick Maxwell, Dean of the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, UK, said, "With the freely available data from this study, we can truly understand how mammals develop and how tissues are organized
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It will also give us insights into the process of development, normal tissue function, and disease
.
"

"The volume of data required by spatiotemporal omics technology has increased by orders of magnitude compared with past omics technologies, which is an unprecedented challenge
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To this end, we have developed a series of new algorithms and related visualizations adapted to its data analysis.
The database hopes to help solve a series of challenges that this field may face in terms of computing storage and algorithm computing power in the future
.
" Li Yuxiang, one of the co-corresponding authors of the series of papers and chief scientist of bioinformatics at Shenzhen BGI Life Sciences Research Institute, mentioned
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In addition to mice, researchers have also studied the developmental process of model organisms such as zebrafish and Drosophila, and constructed a spatiotemporal map of embryonic development in zebrafish and Drosophila, which provides information on pattern formation and related molecular mechanisms during embryonic development.
Important data references also provide the possibility for the study of embryonic evolution in the process of evolution
.

In order to overcome the long-standing problem that researchers have been unable to effectively analyze the molecular characteristics of highly similar cell types in plant leaves, the researchers also successfully developed a single-cell space group technology suitable for plants based on Stereo-seq technology, and applied this technology.
A spatial omics study of plant leaf cells
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This technology will be applied in plant basic scientific research and crop breeding research, such as the mining of dominant key genes in the seed development and mechanism analysis of drought resistance, high temperature resistance and salt tolerance of crops such as rice, wheat and corn, for high-yield, Contribute to the cultivation of high-quality, stress-resistant crop lines
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In addition, the special web page also displays 4 BioRxiv preprinted results, including monkey brain spatiotemporal atlas, salamander brain regeneration spatiotemporal atlas, tumorigenesis process spatiotemporal atlas, etc.
Powerful tool
.

"The progress of life science depends on the development of technology.
In the future, we will further develop spatio-temporal technology and spatio-temporal multi-omics technology suitable for clinical samples.
We believe that this technology will bring important impetus to life science and medical research
.
" Series Xu Xun, another co-corresponding author of the paper and dean of Shenzhen BGI Life Sciences Research Institute, said, "The drawing of the spatiotemporal map of life is inseparable from the cooperation of global scientists organized by big science projects.
In the future, we will work together with scientists in various fields to promote the comprehensive development of organ atlas, disease pathology, individual development and life evolution
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"

The series of studies were jointly completed by 32 scientific research teams from 6 countries, including Shenzhen BGI Life Sciences Research Institute, Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, and Huazhong Agricultural University
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The research has passed the ethical review and strictly followed the corresponding regulations and ethical guidelines
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Cell special page link: https://