How Low Can You Go?

The Scientist spoke with five researchers who are bring their studies down to the single-cell level. Joris Vermeesch at the Center for Human Genetics in Belgium is working on looking at the entire genomes of the eight cells that make up a blastomere to improve in vitro fertilization. UCSF's Jonathan Weissman is determining protein abundance in single cells — his team found that though housekeeping genes are stable, proteins vary. Other researchers they include are Ramunas Stepanauskas at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Xiaoliang Sunney Xie at Harvard, and Renato Zenobi at ETH.