Lineage tracking articles from across Nature Portfolio

DNA barcoding methods for the analysis of clonal heterogeneity in cancer have been limited in terms of throughput and practical requirements. Here, the authors develop SunCatcher, a rapid and sensitive barcoding approach for live single-cell clonal evolution analysis, and use this method to study breast cancer cell populations.

Zhao et al. use genetic lineage tracing to demonstrate that pancreatic endocrine and exocrine progenitor cells do not generate new beta cells, thus arguing against beta-cell neogenesis in the adult mouse pancreas.

Understanding developmental trajectories has recently been enabled by progress in modern lineage-tracing methods that combine genetic lineage analysis with omics-based characterization of cell states (particularly transcriptomes). In this Review, Wagner and Klein discuss the conceptual underpinnings, experimental strategies and analytical considerations of these approaches, as well as the biological insights gained.

Novel methods for tracking the progeny of single cells involve prospective lineage tracing, in which DNA barcodes are introduced into single cells and tracked over time, or retrospective lineage tracing, in which somatic mutations are used as DNA barcodes. These methods improve our understanding of cell fates in development, cell differentiation and tissue regeneration.

In this Review, Mallat and colleagues critically evaluate the studies on the origin, fate and functions of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) in atherosclerosis, highlighting the importance of developmental origin, clonal expansion and plasticity of VSMCs cells in atherosclerosis and summarizing the roles of VSMCs and VSMC-derived cells in plaque development and progression.

DARLIN enables the generation of a massive diversity of barcodes for in vivo lineage tracing and the combination with single-cell multi-omics measurements.

Four new studies in Nature report multi-tissue analyses of somatic mutations from human donors, with insights into cell lineage commitment during embryonic development, as well as tissue-specific aspects of mutagenesis.

Two new studies in Science use lineage tracking in humans to show that among the first few embryonic cells originating from post-fertilization cell divisions, there can be substantial imbalance in their contributions to mature tissues.

A new study in Cell describes the CRISPR array repair lineage tracing (CARLIN) engineered mouse line that genomically encodes all the components for CRISPR-based lineage tracking at single-cell resolution.