We are happy to announce the beginning of the second series of NGSeminars!
First, we invite you to the unique bioinformatics visit to the coral reef with Anamaria Elek.
Join us on Wednesday, 9th June 2021 at 4 PM CET on YouTube or Discord!
Speaker: Anamaria Elek
Anamaria Elek - a PhD student at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain, in the group of Arnau Sebé Pedrós. She works on gene regulation and cell type evolution of early metazoans. On a day-to-day basis, this implies analyzing and interpreting single cell transcriptomics and chromatin profiling data, with the focus on TF usage, motifs and gene regulatory networks.
Talk abstract
Cell types are basic functional and evolutionary units of animal multicellularity. Single-cell sequencing has been revolutionizing in characterizing cell types, and recent improvements in single-cell methods should greatly improve taxon sampling in understudied animal lineages such as early-branching non-bilaterian metazoans, which are most informative for studying evolution of cell types. In this context we have recently published the first comprehensive cell type atlas of a reef-building coral Stylophora pistillata, identifying over 40 different cell types, including previously characterized immune cells. This is an important resource for the scientific community working towards understanding and preserving biodiversity of coral reefs. We have also identified evolutionary conserved cell types at the phylum level, by comparing cell types across four different species. This initial analysis establishes the principles for phylogenetically informed cell type comparisons across species we want to do in the future, with the goal of tracing the evolution of first animal cell types.
Don't miss our next seminars!
For details visit NGSeminars 2021 calendar or News.