Network-based Analysis of Cellular Heterogeneity

Living cells function via an intricate network of many molecular entities such as genes, proteins and metabolites. Regulatory networks are a type of molecular interaction network that connect a special class of proteins called transcription factors to genes and determine when and where a gene is expressed. These networks are central to information processing in cells.

Single cell omic technologies, such as single cell RNA-seq and ATAC-seq, are revolutionizing modern biology enabling researchers to profile the activity of nearly all genomic regions in each individual cell. A particularly exciting aspect of single cell omic technologies is their potential to reveal cell type-specific regulatory networks.

This project will develop computational methods for revealing cell-type specific regulatory networks, which are central to characterizing complex tissues and are often disrupted in many diseases. Identification of these regulatory networks will enable an improved understanding of heterogeneous cell populations, how they arise and function in normal processes and get disrupted in disease processes.

 

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:

Sushmita Roy, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics and Wisconsin Institute for Discovery’s Systems Biology research group

 

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:

Rupa Sridharan, Assistant Professor of Cell and Regenerative Biology

 

COLLABORATORS:

Randolph Ashton, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Xinyu Zhao, Professor of Neuroscience

Kris Saha, Assistant Scientist of Biomedical Engineering

Data Science Hub at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery