Lectures and seminars Guest seminar - Johan Henriksson, Umeå University
Friday, January 23 at 10am in Faculty Club, Biomedicum. Title: “A story of bacteria, telomeres and CAR T-cells:
Toward the next generation single-cell technology”.
Welcome to guest seminar by Associate Prof. Johan Henriksson Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University
Time: 10:00-11:00, January 23
Place: Faculty Club, Biomedicum level 10.
Title: “A story of bacteria, telomeres and CAR T-cells: Toward the next generation single-cell technology”.
Single-cell analysis has become a staple technology in modern research. The key driver has been droplet microfluidics, where cells are encapsulated in a water-in-oil droplet, along with necessary reagents. Because of the difficulty of exchanging the reagents, focus has been on “one-pot” protocols, where oligos and enzymes are added along with a compatible mild lysis buffer. This approach has been sufficient for common RNA-seq and ATAC-seq, but more complex protocols are needed to be able to query other omics layers.
Here we show how semi-permeable capsules (SPCs) can be used for a range of applications, from microbes to CAR T-cell development. We also introduce Zorn/Bascet, a software suite designed for methods developers, with a particular focus on genomic applications. Zorn/Bascet is the first software that deploys the countsketch algorith, enabling comparison of cells lacking a genome, such as in the context of microbial metagenomics and cancer.
Our software is implemented in the language Rust, resulting in blazingly fast but safe code that is able to scale to modern datasets. We believe that Rust is the future for bioinformatics and are working toward creating a national community: https://tinyurl.com/rustnorth