Single-Cell Biology

Single-cell biology is the application of technologies that enable multi-omics investigation at the level of the building block of life, a single cell. By accelerating the development and application of single-cell tools and technologies, we can better understand how disease manifests in the body’s cells and tissues.

Single-cell biology is relevant to all cells in all tissues, and the field is generating data at a nearly unprecedented rate. Developing new analytical methods can help the scientific community store, analyze, and explore these rich data types.

An immunofluorescence image of the first part of the small intestine, called the duodenum (CZI Single-Cell Biology).

An immunofluorescence image of the first part of the small intestine, called the duodenum. Photo provided by Emma Lundberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

The single-cell biology program has funded the following RFAs:

Measuring Metabolism Across Scales
Single-Cell Biology Data Insights (Cycle 1, $5.2 million and Cycle 2, $4.9 million)
Patient-Partnered Single-Cell Analysis of Rare Pediatric Disease, $10 million

Ancestry Networks for the Human Cell Atlas, $27.9 million
Pediatric Networks for the Human Cell Atlas, $34.2 million
Single-Cell Analysis of Inflammation, $14 million
Seed Networks for the Human Cell Atlas, $67.7 million
Collaborative Computational Tools for a Human Cell Atlas, $14.8 million
Pilot Projects for a Human Cell Atlas, $14.9 million

CZ CELLxGENE

Built by our science technology team, Chan Zuckerberg CELL by GENE (CZ CELLxGENE) is an open source tool that allows scientists to explore and visualize high-dimensional single-cell datasets to more quickly surface important information that could lead to discoveries in treating disease. It also comprises the largest corpus of standardized single-cell datasets. Learn more at czcellxgene.org.

CZI’s Support for the Human Cell Atlas

How can we cure, prevent, or manage all diseases? The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) is a global, scientist-led collaboration to map and characterize all cells in the healthy human body as a resource for scientific studies of health and disease. We contribute to the HCA in several ways, including supporting development of a data coordination platform, building computational tools, and grantmaking that enables methods development and data generation. Learn more about the Human Cell Atlas.

Immune cells and microbes interacting across the fragile, one-cell thick gut lining of a fruit fly (CZI Single-Cell Biology).

New technology lets scientists peer inside living fruit flies, allowing them to watch immune cells and gut microbes interact across the gut's fragile, one-cell thick lining. Photo provided by Lucy Erin O'Brien, Stanford University.

Inflammation

Inflammation is a natural defense that helps our bodies maintain a healthy state, but chronic inflammation results in harmful diseases like asthma, arthritis, and heart disease. We fund scientists to study the role of inflammation in maintaining health and triggering diseases so that we can better diagnose, treat, and manage them.

Learn About Our Grantees

Learn more

DUE

Dec

This grant program seeks to support computational experts to advance tools and resources that make it possible to gain greater insights into health and disease from single-cell biology datasets.

Single-Cell Biology Data Insights

Cycle 1 - $5.2 Million
Cycle 2 - $4.9 Million

Closed

This RFA aims to accelerate innovative discoveries in the field of metabolism and metabolic physiology in health and disease.

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This RFA aims to support the application of single-cell biology methods to rare inflammatory pediatric diseases that will clarify cellular mechanisms of disease, understand disease heterogeneity, and improve biomarker identification or diagnostics.

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This RFA supports researchers to contribute healthy, single-cell reference data from ancestrally diverse tissue samples to the Human Cell Atlas, with the aim of creating a more globally representative resource to understand disease.

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This grant program supports researchers to contribute pediatric tissue samples to the global Human Cell Atlas as a foundation for understanding how cells and organs progress and relate to disease onset in children.

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This RFA supports interdisciplinary scientists as they apply new tools and work together in accelerating inflammation research. With these research grants, we aim to further our understanding of inflammation’s role in maintaining health and triggering disease.

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This RFA supports the continued development of the Human Cell Atlas, a global effort to map all cells in the human body.

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This program awards grants to spur the creation of new computational tools, algorithms, visualizations, and benchmark datasets to analyze, interpret, and disseminate a large variety of molecular and imaging data generated for the global Human Cell Atlas.

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This program awards scientific grants to support the Human Cell Atlas community’s convergence around standards, protocols, and best practices for the creation of a freely and openly available reference database of healthy human cells and tissues.