DNA barcodes evolve for high-resolution cell lineage tracing.

DNA barcodes evolve for high-resolution cell lineage tracing. Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2019 Jun 15;52:63-71 Authors: Masuyama N, Mori H, Yachie N Abstract Mammalian development involves continuous dynamic processes in which cells propagate, differentiate, orchestrate, and decease to produce high-order functions. Although accurate cell lineage information can provide a strong foundation to understand such complex processes, the cell lineages involved in development of the whole mammalian body remain largely unclear, except for in early embryogenesis, which is observable under a microscope. With CRISPR genome editing, the concept of 'evolving DNA barcodes' has rapidly emerged for large-scale, high-resolution cell lineage tracing, where cell-embedded DNA barcodes continuously accumulate random mutations that are inherited from mother to daughter cells. Similar to evolutionary tree reconstruction using species' DNA sequences, cell lineages can be reconstructed using shared mutation patterns in the DNA barcodes identified using massively parallel sequencing. The dramatic developments of single-cell and imaging technologies have enabled analyses of the molecular and spatial architecture of heterogeneous cells. The evolving DNA barcodes can also consolidate this information on a reconstructed cell lineage tree and accelerate our understanding of multicellular organisms. PMID: 31212208 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Current Opinion in Chemical Biology - Category: Biochemistry Authors: Tags: Curr Opin Chem Biol Source Type: research