Life Sciences Seminar Series: Gaudenz Danuser - Imaging the cell morphological control of oncogenic signals

We’re excited to relaunch the Life Sciences Seminar Series (LSS)! These seminars showcase cutting-edge research across the diverse fields of life sciences. We’re kicking off the series with a fascinating talk by Gaudenz Danuser, who joins us from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW).

We hope you’ll join us for this exciting first event, and stay for the apero to connect with fellow researchers.

Abstract
Cell morphology is used in research and clinical practice as a signature of cell behavior. Many studies have linked cell morphotype to function, and for almost two centuries pathologists have exploited morphology as biomarkers for the diagnosis and stratification of disease. The tight association between a cell morphotype and a cell state has gained even more significance with the growing number of machine learning applications that derive from morphology predictions not only of behavior but of genetic and molecular cell states. Regardless of whether the connection between morphology and cell state is analyzed by human or machine, these analyses place the morphotype implicitly or explicitly downstream of cell state regulation, i.e., ‘form follows function’. However, our recent work has provided evidence that cell morphology is part of the regulator, i.e., ‘function follows form’. We have identified mechanisms by which cell shape dictates signaling and metabolism. Especially in the context of cancer we find that specific morphogenic programs amplify the oncogenic penetrance of genetic and molecular aberrations and/or confer adaptive drug resistance. These discoveries have been enabled by innovation in microscopy and computer vision to quantify with high resolution the interplay between signaling and morphogenesis in experimental systems that do not artificially constrain morphogenesis. 

Bio
Gaudenz Danuser is the founding chair of the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW). He is also the Director the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center for Systems Biology, he holds the Patrick E. Haggerty Distinguished Chair in Basic Biomedical Science and is a Scholar of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). Before moving to UTSW, Danuser led research laboratories at ETH Zurich, at The Scripps Research Institute, and at Harvard Medical School.
His lab’s research is currently focused on understanding the roles shape regulation play in metastatic cell proliferation, survival and therapy resistance. To address these questions the lab develops innovative quantitative imaging methods to experimentally probe these processes and uses machine learning and tools from financial mathematics to compile the data in mechanistic models. He is a devoted teacher in areas of computational cell biology and AI both at the institutional and international level.