The 2022 Annual Review Issue of The Journal of Pathology, Recent Advances in Pathology, contains 15 invited reviews on research areas of growing importance in pathology. This year, the articles include those that focus on digital pathology, employing modern imaging techniques and software to enable improved diagnostic and research applications to study human diseases. This subject area includes the ability to identify specific genetic alterations through the morphological changes they induce, as well as integrating digital and computational pathology with \'omics technologies. Other reviews in this issue include an updated evaluation of mutational patterns (mutation signatures) in cancer, the applications of lineage tracing in human tissues, and single cell sequencing technologies to uncover tumour evolution and tumour heterogeneity. The tissue microenvironment is covered in reviews specifically dealing with proteolytic control of epidermal differentiation, cancer-associated fibroblasts, field cancerisation, and host factors that determine tumour immunity. All of the reviews contained in this issue are the work of invited experts selected to discuss the considerable recent progress in their respective fields and are freely available online (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10969896). © 2022 The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Genomic and chromosomal changes occur with a high rate in the germline and preimplantation embryos. To study such changes directly in the germline of mammals requires access to material as well as single cell genomics. Recent improvements in embryology and single-cell DNA amplification make it possible to study the genomic changes directly in human oocytes, sperm, and preimplantation embryos. This is particularly important for the study of chromosome segregation directly in human oocytes and preimplantation embryos. Here, we present a practical approach how to obtain high quality DNA sequences and genotypes from single cells, using manual handling of the material that makes it possible to detect genomic changes in meiosis and mitosis spanning the entire range from single nucleotide changes to whole chromosome aneuploidies.