Chih-Chieh (Jay) Yu (BOYDEN LAB)

Physical Expansion of a Nematode Enables Whole-organism In Situ Analysis With Nanoscale Resolution

Studies of biological systems will benefit from a robust method to collect molecular information over an entire organism at high spatial resolution. We have developed a method to physically expand fixed tissues of the nematode model C. elegans with high isotropy, while allowing simultaneous detection of fluorescent proteins, DNAs and RNAs at sub-cellular resolution. We demonstrate the utility of this method for analyzing neuronal connectivity, transcriptomic profiles and other structural features of the entire animal.

Paul Reginato (BOYDEN & CHURCH LABS)

Toward Chromatin Conformation Imaging: Two Approaches for In Situ Genomics

The biological relevance of 3D genome organization is increasingly recognized. Established methods for measuring genome-wide chromatin organization use next-gen sequencing as a proxy for spatial measurement. These methods are difficult to integrate with other ome-wide measurements, tissue context, and morphology in single cells. Measurement of chromatin genome-wide in situ would address these issues. I will propose two approaches for this, both rooted in expansion microscopy and in situ sequencing, and describe progress toward realizing them.