PRBB-CRG Sessions Ataman Sendöl

17/04/202612:00MARIE CURIEPRBB-CRG SessionsAtaman SendölInstitute for Regenerative Medicine (IREM), University of Zurich"Single-cell approaches for monitoring stem cells in aging, clonal expansion and cancer"Host: Fatima GebauerAbstract:Clonal expansions of stem cell populations are widespread in normal epithelia and can remodel entire tissues over a lifetime. However, how these clonal expansions impact tissue function and why only a small fraction of these expanded clones undergo malignant transformation remains poorly understood. In this talk, I will discuss our recent development of in vivo single-cell approaches to dissect stem cell behavior across clonal expansion, aging and tumorigenesis. We developed a CROP-seq-based in vivo single-cell CRISPR strategy to interrogate tissue-wide gene function in mouse epithelia. By combining ultrasound-guided in utero lentiviral microinjections with single-cell RNA sequencing and guide capture, we longitudinally track clonal expansions and define their underlying gene expression programs at single-cell resolution. In parallel, we established a single-cell ribosome profiling approach to monitor translational landscapes across tissues and uncover age-dependent changes in stem cells. Collectively, these approaches provide a scalable in vivo platform to investigate gene regulation and function at single-cell resolution and offer insights into how clonal expansions contribute to early tumorigenesis.