"In Conversation" Series
Lecturer:
Prof. Mor Nitzan (Hebrew University)
Title:
Towards principles of cellular cognition and spatiotemporal design principles in multicellular systems
Abstract:
Gene expression profiles of a cellular population, generated by single-cell RNA sequencing, contain rich, 'hidden' information about biological state and collective multicellular behavior that is lost during the experiment or not directly accessible, including cell type, cell cycle phase, gene regulatory patterns, cell-cell communication, and location within the tissue-of-origin. I will discuss several methods, based on a combination of spectral, machine learning, and dynamical systems approaches, to disentangle and enhance particular signals or information layers that cellular populations encode and interpret their manifestation across space and time. We will further discuss the implications for higher-level, cognitive-like functions of (non-neuronal) multicellular populations, such as information processing, computation and division of labor.
Short Bio:
Mor Nitzan is an Associate Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with joint affiliations at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Racah Institute of Physics, and The Faculty of Medicine. Previously, she was a John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellow and James S. McDonnell Fellow at Harvard University. She obtained a BSc in Physics, and a PhD in Physics and Computational Biology at the Hebrew University. Her research is at the interface of Computer Science, Physics, and Biology, focusing on the representation, inference, and design of multicellular systems. Her group develops computational frameworks to better understand how cells encode multiple layers of spatial and temporal information, and how to efficiently decode that information from single-cell data. They aim to uncover organization principles underlying information processing, computation, division of labor, and self-organization of multicellular structures such as tissues, and how cell-to-cell interactions can be manipulated to optimize tissue structure and function.
Location:
Eilat Hall, Feldman Building, Second Floor, Edmond Safra Campus.