In the afternoon of April 20, 2018，Dr. Tzumin Lee, group leader at the Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, gave a lecture on “Tracking Brain Development from Cell lineages to Genomics ” as part of ShanghaiTech’s Life Science Seminar Series.
Brain is composed of many diverse neurons. In order to elucidate the mechanism ofneuroblasts (NB) development, Dr. Lee uses Drosophila as a genetic model system to study brain cell lineages and development. The fly cerebrum has numerous distinct neurons arising from a limited number of neural progenitors, and the adult cerebrum develops from approximately 100 pairs of NBs, each of which forms a set of diverse neurons and is characterized by clone-dependent lineage analysis. By stochastic clonal labeling, researchers have mapped approximately 100 NB clones in the adult Drosophila brain. To complete the cell lineage analysis for the entire Drosophila cerebrum, they used twin-spot MARCM to map the individual neurons serially for each NB. In addition, Dr. Lee also discussed the ways howCRISPR-Cas9 technique is integrated into the above research.
The talk was followed by a lively and stimulating discussion. Following the seminar, Dr Lee engaged in comprehensive and thorough discussion with several professors.
