Abstract: Series 113, Lecture 5
The Harvey Lectures Series 113 (2017—2018)
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Lecture #5: Thursday, March 15, 2018 — Watch Video of Lecture
Dissecting the Cellular Ecosystem of Tissues and Tumor with Single Cell Genomics
Aviv Regev, PhD
Chair of the Faculty and Core Member, Broad Institute
Director, Klarman Cell Observatory, Broad Institute
Professor, Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Three of the fundamental questions in biology are how do individual cells differentiate to form complex tissues, how do such tissues maintain homeostasis, and what are the gene regulatory mechanisms that support these processes. Single cell genomics has opened new ways to approach each of these questions by combining the throughput and comprehensive nature of genomics with the microscopic resolution that is required for description of complex multi-cellular phenomena. In this talk I will discuss how the first generation of single cell genomics techniques, especially single cell RNA-seq, allowed us to identify remarkable rich phenomenology of heterogeneous cellular behaviors, and how new experimental and computational approaches are helping transform such initial observational studies to models of dynamics and causal mechanism in tissues in health and disease.