DNA 'tape recorder' to trace cell history

[nitpicker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36397034

DNA 'tape recorder' to trace cell history

By Roland Pease
BBC Radio Science Unit


27 May 2016

From the section Science & Environment

Researchers have invented a DNA "tape recorder" that can trace the family history of every cell in an organism. The technique is being hailed as a breakthrough in understanding how the trillions of complex cells in a body are descended from a single egg.
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The human body has around 40 trillion cells, each with a highly specialised function. Yet each can trace its history back to the same starting point - a fertilised egg.

Developmental biology is the business of unravelling how the genetic code unfolds at each cycle of cell division, how the body plan develops, and how tissues become specialised. But much of what it has revealed has depended on inference rather than a complete cell-by-cell history.
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That changed with recent developments in so called CRISPR gene editing, a technique that allows researchers to make much more precise alterations to the DNA in living organisms. The molecular tape recorder developed by Prof Shendure's team at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, is a length of DNA inserted into the genome that contains a series of edit points which can be changed throughout an organism's life. Each edit records a permanent mark on the tape that is inherited by all of a cell's descendants. By examining the number and pattern of all these marks in an adult cell, the team can work back to find its origins.

Developmental biologist James Briscoe of the Crick Institute, in London, UK, calls it "a creative and exciting use" of the CRISPR technique. "It uniquely and indelibly marks cells with a 'barcode' that is inherited in the DNA. This means you can use the barcode to trace all the progeny of barcoded cells," he said.
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