CCB Brown Bag Seminar

SPEAKERS:

Jasmin Imran Alsous, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Developmental Dynamics  

NUCLEAR METAMORPHOSIS & MOTILITY OF C-FERN SPERM: I will describe a new project that aims to use long-term and rapid live imaging to shed light on two understudied yet striking aspects of the C-fern’s gamete-producing stage of life: (1) the nuclear metamorphosis that occurs during sperm development, whereby sperm nuclei change shape from spherical to highly compacted, elongated, and coiled objects, and (2) the motility of the cork-screw shaped mature sperm, driven by ~70 flagella at their anterior end. Our experimental data will form the basis for theoretical modeling that can rationalize our observations, with potential application to various plant sperm forms that share this non-canonical morphology.

Weiguang (Wayne) Mao, Ph.D., Flatiron Research Fellow, Genomics

DA VINCI INTEGRATES SPECIAL MULTI-OMICS DATA TO IDENTIFY NICHES AND ASSOCIATED REGULATORY CIRCUITS: Spatial multi-omics technology now enables a simultaneous acquisition of multi-omic data from the same tissue slice, offering a powerful approach to comprehensively characterize the tissue heterogeneity. However, most existing computational methods fall short in capturing integrated niches across multiple slices, which is crucial for a holistic understanding of tissue anatomy. To overcome this limitation, we introduce DaVinci, an integration framework capable of both cross-sample and cross-omic integration. DaVinci outperforms existing approaches in recovering known spatial domains on both spatial single-omic and multi-omic datasets. Furthermore, DaVinci enables functional interpretation of the spatial heterogeneity by identifying novel niche-specific regulatory pathways. When time allows, I will discuss how DaVinci enables new biological insights into mouse retina development.