A single-cell platform to discover and study regulators of human development

描述(申请人提供)：发现和研究人类发育调控的单细胞平台人类多能干细胞(PSCs)具有在体内形成几乎任何细胞类型的潜力，由于其潜在的再生医学应用以及最近患者特有的干细胞通过重新编程使分化的成人细胞能够转变为多能细胞的潜力，一直是密切研究的焦点。然而，在这种兴奋的阴影下，利用多能干细胞进行人类发育生物学基础研究的潜力被忽视了。考虑到人类和小鼠之间的基本生理差异，这一点尤其相关--人类和小鼠是通常进行此类研究的最接近的亲戚。我未来研究计划的长期目标是使用PSCs来发现和表征人类发育过程的新调节因子(即基因、代谢物、生长因子、非编码RNA)。为了实现这一点，有必要创建一个平台(一套方法和分析工具)，以允许对人类干细胞在自然和研究人员控制的情况下分化的路径进行建模、跟踪和比较。为此，我将 使用下一代单细胞分析仪器(CyTOF质量细胞仪)，我之前曾使用它来测量人类骨髓中大多数已知细胞类型对药物、细胞因子和生长因子的反应中的蛋白质表达、调节修饰、细胞周期和细胞死亡的水平，以表征这一系统。我将首先创建一个使用标准分化条件进行分化的多能细胞的单细胞模板。我将创建一套计算工具，不仅考虑到细胞分化的动态性质，而且还能够在不同的研究人员控制的条件下比较分化的细胞类型。最后，我将使用稳定的基因敲除方法来靶向感兴趣的基因，这些基因基于先前在人类PSCs与其分化的对应物中差异表达的蛋白质。这一实验管道将导致建立一个新的和独特的平台(一种数据收集方法，一种数据分析和解释方法，以及对其实施的概念验证)，以表征细胞分化的假定调节因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A single-cell platform to discover and study regulators of human development Human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which have the potential to form virtually any cell type in the body, have been the subject of intense research focus due to their potential application to regenerative medicine and the more recent potential for patient specific stem cells via reprogramming, allowing differentiated adult cells to be turned into pluripotent ones. However, in the shadow of this excitement, the potential to exploit pluripotent stem cells for fundamental studies in human developmental biology has been overlooked. This is especially pertinent given the fundamental physiological differences between the human and mouse - the closest relative where such studies are typically carried out. The long-term goal of my future research program is to use PSCs to discover and characterize new regulators (i.e. genes, metabolites, growth factors, non-coding RNA) of the human developmental processes. In order to accomplish this it will be necessary to create a platform (set of methods and analytical tools) to allow the modeling, tracing, and comparison of the paths by which human stem cells differentiate under natural and investigator-controlled situations. To this end, I will use a next-generation single-cell analysis instrumentation (CyTOF mass cytometry), which I have previously used to measure levels of protein expression, regulatory modifications, cell cycle and cell death across most known cell types in human bone marrow in response to drugs, cytokines, and growth factors, to characterize this system. I will first create a single cell templte of pluripotent cells undergoing differentiation using standard differentiation conditions. I will ten create a set of computational tools that will not only take into consideration the dynamic nature of cellular differentiation, but also enable the comparison of differentiating cell-types in differnt investigator controlled conditions. Finally, I will use stable gene knockdown approaches to target genes of interest based on proteins previously identified as differentially expressed in human PSCs versus their differentiated counterparts. Together this pipeline of experimentation will result in the establishment of a new and unique platform (a method for data collection, a method for data analysis and interpretation, and a proof-of-concept of its implementation) for the characterizing putative regulators of cellular differentiation.