Prof. Daniel Chiu, University of Washington

Physical Tools for Probing Biological Complexity with Single-Cell and Single-Molecule Resolutions

The basic unit of any biological system is the cell. A single germ cell, when functioning properly and guided by genetic programming and environmental inputs, can give rise to the complexity of an entire organism. When a single cell malfunctions, such as in cancer, it can seed the formation of a distant tumor, the source of over 90% of cancer mortality. Single cell analysis will provide both a fundamental understanding of biology as well as advance our understanding of diseases. This presentation describes some of the techniques that we have developed over the past years to study biological complexity at the single-cell level. The ability to perform highly parallel yet sensitive and quantitative single cell measurements is anticipated to find broad applications in the area of digital biology, the high information-content analysis of individual biological units for arriving at a systems level understanding of biological function and phenotypic traits.

For more information contact Prof. Andrew Lyon (404-894-4090).