Speaker: Sharad Ramanathan, Harvard University

Title: Extracting Reaction Co-ordinates to Understand the Dynamics of Early Human and Mouse Development

Abstract: As pluripotent stem cells progress through development, they make lineage decisions that direct them towards specific cell fates. A sequence of these cell fate decisions give rise to the diversity of cell types in the body. I will present our analysis of single cell gene expression data to determine the sequence of lineage decisions that lead to the early human brain development. I will then ask whether are good low dimensional projections of the fate decisions that allow us to visualize the dynamics of decision making in real time in single cells. The ability to measure these dynamics accurately allow us to uncover new biology including how the cells sense external signals that drive developmental decisions.