When Stochasticity Meets Precision in a Single Cell

Cells are the fundamental unit of life. Recently, tremendous technical developments have made it possible to characterize individual cells from different tissue environments at the genomic level. Single-cell genomic techniques include measuring single-cell genomes, transcriptomes, methylomes, 3D genome structures, chromosome accessibility, cell lineages, and single-cell proteomes. Next-generation sequencing, microfluidic techniques, and super-resolution microscopy have spurred the development, and important new knowledge derived from these single-cell genomic techniques have been continuing to emerge. The burgeoning use of single-cell genomics to elucidate biological problems is a highly multidisciplinary effort. As single-cell genomic techniques continue to evolve with higher precision and sophistication, new observations are broadening our understanding of molecular and cellular biology, which has started to have direct impact to medicine. This conference seeks to bring together top experts in molecular and cellular biology with innovators in genomic technologies and computational biologists. The intention is to better promote the use of single-cell genomics to generate biological knowledge and to better orient the development and application of single-cell genomics for compelling biomedical problems.