BMI Special Seminar // Gioele La Manno - "Revealing the molecular and cellular architecture of the nervous system”

From the early histological observations by Cajal, the field of neurobiology has accumulated a monumental amount of knowledge about the molecular and cellular complexity of the brain. Nonetheless, only recently, a system-level classification of its molecular and cellular complexity has become technologically feasible. 
In this talk, I will discuss the contributions of my lab to the description of this complexity and how it is generated during development. I will, first, present a single-cell transcriptome atlas of mouse brain development spanning from gastrulation to birth and describe how spatially-resolved transcriptomic data can complement and be used to map cell states more precisely. Continuing on spatial profiling, I will describe an approach that we developed to resolve different types of next-generation sequencing data spatially. I will showcase the technique with the profiling of the brain of the Australian bearded dragon. Finally, I will summarize the most recent efforts of the lab to study the dynamics of interconversion of intermediate cell states and their implication for future treatment of neurodegenerative conditions.