Event:

The human brain contains hundreds of distinct subtypes of neurons and glia distributed across dozens of functional and anatomical areas. How this vast array of cells emerge from a limited set of progenitor cells remains a fundamental question in neurobiology. For the last 10 years, single cell sequencing technologies have revolutionized the study of cell diversity, but the static snapshots of cell diversity do not capture the dynamic nature of developmental processes. In my talk, I will start by describing our efforts to increase the utility of single cell sequencing technologies and their adaptations to human nervous system development, including studies of alternative splicing, cell lineage, and cell-cell interactions. Next, I will describe our efforts to apply the same technologies to studies of cell diversity and function in the human adult brain, taking advantage of neurosurgical specimens available to research.