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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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PRESENTED BY
Amjad Askary
Postdoctoral Fellow
Biology and Biological Engineering
California Institute of Technology
ABSTRACT
Tracing the lineage and molecular history of individual cells is central to study of embryonic development as well as disorders like cancer. Genetic barcodes enable clonal analysis as well as active recording of lineage and molecular events in the genome of the cells. Existing barcode readout methods that rely on sequencing can sensitively detect barcodes but lose information about the spatial organization of cells within tissues, tumors and other multicellular contexts. By contrast, imaging methods preserve the spatial context, but are far less sensitive to barcode sequence. We have developed a system for scalable in situ readout of compact DNA barcodes and single nucleotide modifications in cells and tissue sections. Together with multiplexed in situ transcriptional profiling and CRISPR base editing, this method allows us to trace lineage of many cells in each individual sample, reconstruct lineage trees, and even connect the gene expression and signaling history of the progenitors to their eventual fates. In this talk, I present our approach to imaging-based barcoding and discuss how this technology can be used to investigate elusive aspects of cell fate specification in the mammalian retina.
BIOGRAPHY
Amjad Askary is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech, working with Dr. Michael Elowitz. He studies cell fate specification in the mammalian retina using technologies that he has developed for synthetic recording and in situ readout of lineage and cellular history. Amjad received his undergraduate and Master’s degree in Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering in 2010 from University of Tehran in Iran. He then earned a PhD in Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology from University of Southern California in 2016 under the mentorship of Dr. Gage Crump. His work has been published in numerous high-impact journals including Nature Biotechnology, Developmental Cell, and eLife, and has been funded by many sources and competitive awards, including NICHD T32 developmental biology training grant, J. P. Trinkaus Endowed Scholarship award, HHMI and Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellowship award, and the National Eye Institute of NIH in the form of a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award.
