NBIO Presents: Xiaoyin Chen, PhD (Allen Institute)

Understanding brain variations using scalable barcoded connectomics and spatiomics

Humans and other animals exhibit a wide range of behaviors that are both species-specific and variable within a species. Both types of behavioral variations are enabled by genetic, molecular, and circuit variations in the brain. Mapping and comparing brain-wide variations at cellular resolution across a population, however, remains a tremendous challenge. My lab aims to solve this challenge by developing in situ sequencing and barcoded connectomics tools. These tools are scalable to brain-wide interrogation across populations and sufficiently low-cost to be applied by individual labs, and allow us to understand molecular and circuit variations with unprecedented details. In this talk, I will discuss three related studies in which we use these approaches to reveal how the visual cortex and thalamus develop and adapt from mouse to marmoset and macaque. Finally, I will discuss preliminary data that aim to reveal how individual variations impact brain-wide organization at the molecular level.

Health Sciences G328 and Zoom