CSB Seminar Series – Molecular roadmaps of brain development, lineage and signaling – Prof Bushra Raj

Molecular roadmaps of brain development, lineage and signaling

Professor Bushra Raj

Department of Cell & Developmental Biology

University of Pennsylvania

Brain neurogenesis comprises many steps from proliferation of progenitors to differentiation and maturation of neurons. However, roadmaps of the fates and origins of cells, landscapes of transcriptional changes, and cell lineage relationships during brain development are poorly characterized. I leveraged the scale and resolution of single-cell genomics and CRISPR barcoding technologies to develop scGESTALT, which simultaneously determines cell type identity and lineage relationships. Using this method, I generated large-scale branching lineage trees of zebrafish brains with the tips representing cell types defined using associated gene expression signatures. To further investigate the molecular and cellular diversity, I generated zebrafish brain atlases spanning multiple critical neurogenic periods from early to late stages of development. Mining this compendium revealed several global principles of neurogenesis, such as progenitor maturation and gene expression cascades of specific neuronal lineages. Currently, I am developing a novel tool that uses CRISPR-Cas proteins as sensors to barcode signaling inputs from Notch and other pathways in the brain.

HOST: John Calarco

Zoom ID and passcode:

https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/87447422547

Meeting ID: 874 4742 2547

Passcode: 050579