Cytometry Part B (Clinical Cytometry) 78B:361–363 (2010) The Wealth of Cytomics. Re ´sume ´ of the 19 th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Cytometry (Deutsche Gesellschaft Fu ¨r Zytometrie, DGfZ) Elmar Endl, 1 Annette Beck-Sickinger, 2 Christian Wilhelm, 3 Martin Schlegel, 4 and Susann Mu ¨ller 5 * 1 Institute for Molecular Medicine and Experimental Immunology, Bonn University, 53105 Bonn, Germany 2 Biochemistry and Bioorganic Chemistry Department, Institute of Biochemistry, Leipzig University, 04103 Leipzig, Germany 3 Plant Physiology Department, Institute for Biology, Leipzig University, 04103 Leipzig, Germany 4 Molecular Evolution and Animal Sysematics, Institute of Biology II, Leipzig University, 04103 Leipzig, Germany 5 Department Environmental Microbiology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) Halle-Leipzig, 04318 Leipzig, Germany Key terms: cytomics; population; heterogeneity; single cell analysis How to cite this article: Endl E, Beck-Sickinger A, Wilhelm C, Schlegel M, Mu ¨ller S. The wealth of cytomics. Re ´- sume ´ of the 19 th annual meeting of the German society for cytometry (Deutsche Gesellschaft fu ¨r Zytometrie, DGfZ). Cytometry Part B 2010; 78B: 361–363. Cytomics is the science of individual cells as a whole and unravels position, physiological state, and function of a cell within cohorts of cells, cell communities, tis- sues, and organisms. Cytomics is being addressed by cytometric techniques such as microscopy and flow cytometry to analyze and manipulate cells on a single cell level. Cytomics is a relatively new discipline that ori- ginated from the medical field and seeks to address this need by describing the roles of cells and subsets of cells within complex and dynamic cell networks (1). The dis- cipline is especially powerful in combination with mo- lecular omics approaches promising new breakthroughs in analyzing, e.g., the regulation of pathways, assessing cell functions, and revealing interactions between cells within diverse biological systems (2). Heterogeneity of cells within populations is a well accepted fact in medical sciences. It is obvious that cells fulfill diverse functions within an organism although originating from the same background, containing the same genetic information and identical basic metabolic pathways. Cytometry together with cytomics allows the determination of the molecular and cellular basis of the origin of these differences. Sophisticated technologies are established which enables for multifaceted parame- ter analysis of single cells getting quantitative informa- tion on manifold cell parameters. It is fascinating how deep the virtual decomposition of cell consortia and their interactions can be resolved by continuously devel- oped cytometric techniques. A recent example in oncol- ogy is the characterization of so-called cancer stem cells (CSC), by cytometric techniques, that led to new insights into tumor generation as only single cells or small subsets of cells are suspected to be the intrinsic origin of various heterogeneous (nontumorigenic) can- cer cell lineages. Although the origin of the CSC is still Additional Supporting Information ‘‘Abstracts of the 19th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Cytometry (DGfZ)’’ [http://www. dgfz.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/Abstractbook-DGfZ2009.pdf] may be found in the online version of this article. *Correspondence to: Susann Mu ¨ ller, Department Environmental Microbiology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) Halle-Leipzig, Permoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: susann.mueller@ufz.de Received 22 February 2010; Revision 4 March 2010; Accepted 10 March 2010 Published online 7 April 2010 in Wiley InterScience (www. interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/cyto.b.20521 Regional Spotlight V C 2010 International Clinical Cytometry Society