Single-cell tumour phylogenetics

Single-cell genomics has entered the field of cancer research and clinical oncology, enhancing our understanding of the somatic evolution of cancer and intra-tumour genomic heterogeneity. The evolutionary history of a tumour can be represented as a phylogenetic tree, and in recent years, multiple statistical and computational methods have been proposed to reconstruct tumour phylogenies from single-cell sequencing data. The nature of tumour evolution and of single-cell sequencing, however, raises new challenges in modelling the data and the underlying evolutionary processes that are not addressed by classical phylogenetic and phylodynamic approaches. Here, we review the models and assumptions behind bespoke single-cell tumour phylogeny methods, along with recent computational and algorithmic advances in phylogenetic inference. We discuss the role these advances have in basic and clinical oncology research, and how they provide new insights into individual cancers and cohorts of patient samples. We conclude with an outlook of current challenges for single-cell phylogenetics and potential future applications.