The Human Cell Atlas is an international collaborative effort to create comprehensive reference maps of all human cells using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and related technologies. It provides detailed gene expression profiles at single-cell resolution across a wide range of human tissues, developmental stages, and disease contexts. In addition to human data, companion efforts extend these maps to model organisms like mice, enabling cross-species comparisons of cell types and tissue organization.
In this class, we use curated subsets of Human Cell Atlas data to explore how gene expression varies across individual cells, tissues, and species. These datasets allow students to investigate cellular diversity, identify distinct cell types, and understand how complex tissues are organized at the single-cell level.