Determining the lineage origin of cell types is a major goal in developmental biology. Furthermore, lineage tracing is a powerful approach for understanding the origin of developmental defects as well as the origin of diseases such as cancer. There is now a variety of complementary approaches for identifying lineage relationships, ranging from direct observation of cell divisions by light microscopy to genetic labeling of cells using inducible recombinases and fluorescent reporters. A recent development, and the main topic of this review article, is the use of high-throughput sequencing data for lineage analysis. This emerging approach holds the promise of increased multiplexing capacity, allowing lineage analysis of large cell numbers up to the organism-wide level combined with simultaneous transcription profiling by single cell RNA sequencing.

确定细胞类型的谱系起源是发育生物学的主要目标。此外，沿袭追踪是了解发育缺陷的起源以及癌症等疾病起源的有力方法。现在，存在多种用于鉴定谱系关系的互补方法，从通过光学显微镜直接观察细胞分裂到使用诱导型重组酶和荧光报告基因对细胞进行基因标记。最近的发展以及本文的主要主题是使用高通量测序数据进行谱系分析。这种新兴方法有望增加复用能力，从而允许对高达整个生物体水平的大细胞数量进行谱系分析，并通过单细胞RNA测序同时进行转录分析。