Description:

Department of Statistics 2020-2021 Seminar Series (joint with Biostatistics) - Fall 2020

“Multiscale Inference and Modeling of Cell Fate via Single-cell Data”

Qing Nie, Department of Mathematics, Department of Developmental and Cell Biology, NSF-Simons Center for Multiscale Cell Fate Research, University of California, Irvine

Abstract: Cells make fate decisions in response to dynamic environmental and pathological stimuli as well as cell-to-cell communications.  Recent technological breakthroughs have enabled to gather data in previously unthinkable quantities at single cell level, starting to suggest that cell fate decision is much more complex, dynamic, and stochastic than previously recognized. Multiscale interactions, sometimes through cell-cell communications, play a critical role in cell decision-making. Dissecting cellular dynamics emerging from molecular and genomic scale in single-cell demands novel computational tools and multiscale models. In this talk, through multiple biological examples we will present our recent effort to use single-cell RNA-seq data and spatial imaging data to uncover new insights in development, regeneration, and cancers. We will also present several new computational tools and mathematical modeling methods that are required to study the complex and dynamic cell fate process through the lens of single cells. 

Co-hosted with the NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology