New facilities at SciLifeLab makes way for advanced cell analyses
Three new facilities for single cell biology are being set up at SciLifeLab in Stockholm and Uppsala during spring 2015. The new facilities will render technological advances in Sweden and abroad widely available to the Swedish scientific community, with the goal for the region to become world leading in advanced molecular single cell analyses.
Advances in cell sorting and molecular analyses now enable researchers to comprehensively describe properties and functions of individual cells. This is in contrast to conventional biochemistry and molecular biology, which focuses on analyses of whole tissue samples and whole microbial populations or communities.
The three new single cell-facilities will be integrated in the SciLifeLab national platform Functional Genomics. The facilities build on unique expertise that will allow Swedish researchers to capitalize on recent technological advances to characterize individual cells at genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic levels. The aim is to provide new insights into heterogeneity and division of labor within tissues or communities of cells from all domains of life.
“Single cell genomics can be applied to understand the heterogeneity of tumors, to explain how genetically identical cells may show distinct behavior, and to explore the vast, uncharacterized microbial landscape. Therefore, these technologies have the potential to revolutionize biology and medicine.” says Sten Linnarsson, Senior Researcher at Karolinska Institutet and Platform Director of the Eukaryotic Single-Cell Analysis facility.