First course "Single Cell Biology" starting at the University of Würzburg

Over the last years, Single Cell Biology has emerged a revolutionary scientific field that is currently dramatically changing our understanding of biological systems.

All tissues and organisms are composed of the fundamental unit of life – the cell. However, very little information could be acquired on the genomics properties of single cells and therefore many cell types and their associated functions remain to be discovered.

Based on a major genomics revolution that allows to decompose each individual features of a cell – transcriptome, epigenome and proteome – one can now understand cellular identities and functions with unprecedented resolution. Single Cell Biology opens a new avenue to understand how cells evolve from a healthy state to a ‘disease’ state henceforth it paves the way to design novel therapeutic intervention strategies.

The Single Cell Biology course is at the interface of genomics, bioinformatics, biology and pathology and is designed to all medical and life science students. It will give an introduction of the most recent technologies allowing to perform single cell analysis and an overview of the application of single cell biology across the medical field (cancer, immunology, cardiovascular diseases, and infectious diseases).

Faculty members and scientists of the University of Würzburg will present seminars to explain their most recent research results using Single Cell technologies. Hands-on-practice will allow the students to become familiar with the basic tools to perform data analysis.