An ambitious plan to map all 37 trillion cells in the human body is transforming our understanding of how our bodies work, scientists report.

Received wisdom states that we are made up of approximately 200 types of cells – such as heart muscle or nerve cells.

Instead the Human Cell Atlas project has revealed that there are thousands of cell types, some of which appear to be responsible for diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and cystic fibrosis.

In a flurry of announcements, the formation of the human skeleton and the early immune system have also been described in detail.

The novel’s insights are akin to moving from 15th-century-era maps of Joan of Arc and Richard III to what the phone in your pocket can load.

Older maps of the body had equivalents of major roads and important geography, but cartographers also called those areas unknown or “terra incognita”.

“(Now) it looks like a Google Map, you have a high resolution view and then on top of that you have Street View that explains what’s happening, and then on top of that you have dynamic changes during the day. See when there are fewer cars flowing or more cars flowing,” said Dr. Aviv Regev, one of Genentech’s founders, who now works at Genentech.

He further added, “It is important for us to understand and treat disease, cells are the basic unit of life, if things go wrong, they go wrong with our cells.”

Achieving “human cartography” requires cutting-edge biology and computer science.

The project has so far looked at more than 100 million cells from 10,000 people around the world – each individual analyzed in depth.

magazine nature Now it has been published. A series of 40 scientific discoveries as researchers work towards creating the first draft of the complete human cell atlas.

“This is a major milestone that marks a huge leap in the understanding of the human body,” said Dr. Sarah Teachman of the University of Cambridge and one of the founders of the Human Cell Atlas.

The latest discoveries include a map of the intestine from the mouth, down the esophagus, through the stomach and intestines, and out through the anus.

The researchers looked at the types of cells, where they were located and how they interacted with other cells around them.

Among the 1.6 million cells analyzed were a new form, called gut metaplastic cells. It appears to play a role in increasing inflammation in the seven million people who suffer from inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

“We were able to uncover a pathogenic cell type that may play a role in some chronic conditions and could be a target for future (drug) intervention,” said Dr. Rasa Elmentite, who conducts the research at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

More than 3,600 scientists in 100 countries are collaborating on the Human Cell Atlas, one of the most ambitious projects in biology and described as a successor to the Human Genome Project to sequence the human genetic code.