Insights, opportunities and challenges provided by large cell atlases

Abstract

The field of single-cell biology is growing rapidly and is generating large amounts of data from a variety of species, disease conditions, tissues, and organs. Coordinated efforts such as CZI CELLxGENE, HuBMAP, Broad Institute Single Cell Portal, and DISCO, allow researchers to access large volumes of curated datasets. Although the majority of the data is from scRNAseq experiments, a wide range of other modalities are represented as well. These resources have created an opportunity to build and expand the computational biology ecosystem to develop tools necessary for data reuse, and for extracting novel biological insights. Here, we highlight achievements made so far, areas where further development is needed, and specific challenges that need to be overcome.