Project

Discipline

neuroscience; genetics; oncology; endocrinology; single cell biology; gene environment interactions

Lead
Le système Polaris qui fait l’objet de ce soutien permet d’analyser le transcriptome complet de cellules individuelles mises en culture et exposées à des modifications de l’environnement contrôlées. Il s’agit donc d’un outil de pointe pour la dissection des voies de signalisations moléculaires ainsi que l’analyse de réponses cellulaires à des composés pharmacologiques.
Lay summary
Le système Polaris qui fait l’objet de ce soutien permet d’analyser le transcriptome complet de cellules individuelles mises en culture et exposées à des modifications de l’environnement contrôlées. Il s’agit donc d’un outil de pointe pour la dissection des voies de signalisations moléculaires ainsi que l’analyse de réponses cellulaires à des composés pharmacologiques.Les projets impliqués concerneront les neuroscience, la génétique humaine, et l'endocrinologie. Le principe est d'identifier des voies de transductions dans chacun de ces systèmes avec une résolution cellulaire.

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 30.11.2015

Number	Title	Start	Funding scheme

The anatomical and functional organization of cells within distinct organs results from interactions be-tween cell-intrinsic genetic factors and cell-extrinsic environmental factors. While recent progress has been made in characterizing and understanding cell-intrinsic transcriptional programs in many organs and conditions, even in single cells, how the environment controls the transcriptional activity and overall identity of cells across organs has been difficult to systematically investigate. A major limitation to-wards this aim has been the inability to perturb the environment of single cells and identify stimulus-evoked transcriptional responses in controlled conditions. The state-of-the-art device that we propose to acquire in the frame of this proposal is designed for such a purpose: the Polaris System (Fluidigm Inc) allows integrated single-cell isolation, culture and mo-lecular preparation into a single workflow, such that single cells from a given tissue can be isolated, acutely or chronically challenged/stimulated, and immediately analyzed for gene expression pattern. It builds on previous generation of single-cell sorting devices, which are limited to simple transcriptional characterization, by allowing controlled environmental manipulation and characterization of evoked tran-scriptional responses. The Polaris system therefore bridges the gap between cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic transcriptional programs by allowing access to the intracellular transcriptional pathways activat-ed by controlled environmental stimuli.