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We are all mosaics: vast genetic diversity found between cells in a single person

Technical advances allow researchers to trace the genetic changes that occur over time.
By
  1. Heidi Ledford

    1. Heidi Ledford reports for Nature from Seattle, Washington.

In a technological tour de force, researchers have sequenced the whole genomes of more than 100 individual cells from one 74-year-old man. The results exposed chaos within: an extra chromosome arm here, a missing chunk of chromosome there, and smaller snippets of DNA altered, deleted or duplicated. In several of the cells, the Y chromosome had been lost entirely.

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Nature 648, 18 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03768-0

References

  1. Luquette, L. J. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.31.685648 (2025).

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