Abstract

Individual cells are the building blocks of all metazoan organisms, and the importance of analyzing biology at the single cell level has long been recognized. However, only recently have technological developments begun to allow quantitative single cell analyses on a broad scale, leading to an explosion of international single-cell research. This is an interdisciplinary field with fast-developing data acquisition modalities together with bespoke computational approaches, and now is a major driver of progress across many areas of biology, diagnostics and therapy. Dedicated conferences bringing together scientists with different technological, computational and biomedical focus are therefore crucial to ensure mutual communication and to shape future developments. Current single cell meetings focus on high-throughput molecular snapshot measurements and their computational analysis. This conference will go beyond by emphasizing biological and biomedical applications of single cell approaches, including dynamic live cell measurements, to better understand the molecular control of cell fates and multi-cellular tissue generation in health and disease.