Lecturer: Dr. Assaf Rotem
Affiliation: Harvard University
Abstract:
Biological populations consist of variants
whose unique genes or functions affect the
fate of the system in many important
processes including evolution and
organismal development. Understanding
and ultimately exploiting this diversity
represents one of the grand challenges of
biology: It requires identification of the key
cells that drive these phenomena and the
specific genes or functions that control their
behavior. This can only be achieved with
individual access to each member of the
population; however, most biological assays
average over a large number of cells so that
individual properties of unique cells cannot
be discerned. Using Drop Based
Microfluidics (DBM) I am developing
methods to efficiently assay large numbers
of single cells or microorganisms by
encapsulating them in micron sized drops of
water in oil. Using these methods I
characterized the evolutionary dynamics of
small populations of viruses and the
variations in chromatin states of embryonic
cells, revealing new information about both
systems.