title: Building a lineage from single cells: genetic techniques for cell lineage tracking.
abstract: Resolving lineage relationships between cells in an organism is a fundamental interest of developmental biology. Furthermore, investigating lineage can drive understanding of pathological states, including cancer, as well as understanding of developmental pathways that are amenable to manipulation by directed differentiation. Although lineage tracking through the injection of retroviral libraries has long been the state of the art, a recent explosion of methodological advances in exogenous labelling and single-cell sequencing have enabled lineage tracking at larger scales, in more detail, and in a wider range of species than was previously considered possible. In this Review, we discuss these techniques for cell lineage tracking, with attention both to those that trace lineage forwards from experimental labelling, and those that trace backwards across the life history of an organism.
authors.affiliation: Division of Genetics and Genomics, Manton Center for Orphan Disease, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.|Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.|Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Mollie B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Woodworth
authors.affiliation: Division of Genetics and Genomics, Manton Center for Orphan Disease, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.|Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.|Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Kelly M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Girskis
authors.affiliation: Division of Genetics and Genomics, Manton Center for Orphan Disease, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.|Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.|Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Christopher A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Walsh
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002454:Cell Differentiation / Q000235:genetics*; D019070:Cell Lineage / Q000235:genetics*; D015509:Developmental Biology / Q000379:methods*; D005821:Genetic Techniques; D006801:Humans; D059010:Single-Cell Analysis / Q000379:methods*