Fig. 2. Overview of modern lineage tracing methods.

Various strategies to reconstruct cell lineage trees have been developed in line with advances in next-generation sequencing. Modern lineage tracing can be divided into prospective and retrospective methods. Prospective tracing methods mark cells using fluorescence for imaging-based, and genetic barcoding or genetic scars for computational-based methods, whereas retrospective methods use somatic mutations which occur naturally throughout the lifetime of the organism. Every method using genetic information to reconstruct cell hierarchies is computational-based lineage tracing which needs advanced NGS technologies. The figure is adapted from Fig. 3 of Kester and van Oudenaarden (2018).