Project description:The immune system is a complex infrastructure where many cells interact with each other and perform duties depending on their type and function. When using traditional immunological methods in studying non-traditional model organisms, such as birds, challenges arise. These are often associated with a lack of knowledge surrounding the organism in question—particularly, the expected leukocytes, their cell-specific marker genes, and associated reagents. Single-cell transcriptomics allows us to study the immune system at the level of each singular cell and create a profile of each cell present in a sample without as much prior knowledge of the organism. This project aimed to investigate the possibility of using single-cell transcriptomics as an alternative to traditional methods in avian immunology and using this as a basis for further research into avian medicine. The study was performed by sequencing the mRNA in approximately twenty thousand individual chicken blood cells from 4 healthy adult birds, performing unsupervised clustering of the cells, and attempting to annotate clusters based on expression profiles. Most of this study has been performed using the R-based software Seurat and 10 x genomics software Cell Ranger. Resulting putative cell types include expected populations such as several different T-cells, B-cells, Monocytes, thrombocytes, red blood cells, and cells in various stages of the cell life cycle. After computational analysis, the number of cells per cell type corresponds to laboratory analysis of the cell types performed prior to sequencing. This indicates that the in-silico annotation of putative cell types is consistent with the actual cell types in the samples This study of chicken leukocytes highlights the possibility of the usage of single-cell transcriptomics within non-traditional model organism immunology. It shows that using modern single-cell sequencing and existing software, sequencing-based characterisation of immune cells is possible and could prove a robust option in immunology study cases where traditional methods are limited.
Project description:We performed single cell RNA sequencing on peripheral blood leukocytes from BALB/c mice and IL1rn-deficient mice treated with vehicle or rapamycin
Project description:We used single-cell RNA sequencing to characterize the heterogeneity of circulating leukocytes in dogs, then employed the dataset to investigate how primary osteosarcoma (OS) tumors impacted circulating leukocytes.
Project description:We sequenced single cells with the 10x platform of chicken spleens from chickens genetically resistant and genetically susceptible to Marek's disease, with both infected individuals and uninfected controls from both lines
Project description:Mapping dynamic protein phosphorylation within trace samples deciphers cellular heterogeneity in signaling events and network activations for better understanding biology and disease mechanisms. We present a Chip-DIA strategy combining a microfluidic chip and data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry (DIA-MS) for sensitive nanoscale-to-single cell phosphoproteomic profiling.