Christoph W. Sensen: Cell-to-cell communication via the blood stream: Circulating nucleic acids as molecular disease markers

The presence of nucleic acids in the cell-free fraction of human blood was first described more than 70 years ago. Using next-generation DNA sequencing and subsequent Bioinformatics analysis, it is now possible to characterize the fragments in detail and determine their role(s), as well as their diagnostic potential for mammalian diseases.