I work as a bioinformatician for the Newcastle University Single-Cell Unit (NUSCU). I started this blog as a place to bookmark interesting ideas that I read about both for my own benefit and because I hope they will also be interesting to other people.

Single cell genomics is an exciting and fast moving area of science. Recent advances in single cell sequencing of DNA and RNA along with the development of high dimension mass cytometry have already lead to fascinating  insights into the surprising levels of cellular heterogeneity and the mechanisms behind cellular differentiation. Studying variation at the level of the single cell makes it possible to gain a more accurate representation of cell to cell variation and  a deeper understanding of the gene expression, disease modulation and growth patterns in tumours.

Analysis of single cell data requires new computational methods as there are numerous technical hurdles to overcome to provide biologically meaningful results. This means many new algorithms are being developed to deal with the data. The aim of this blog is to discuss the methods that are being developed and types of biological questions that can be addressed by looking at things on the level of the single cell.