Genomics & Microfluidics: taking Cell Biology into the era of Big Data

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The cell is one of few natural units in biology. Cell size, morphology and function vary greatly between types within an individual, among species, and in response to exogenous molecules (e.g. drugs) or mechanical stress or following genomic mutation, as in cancer. Current approaches commonly assess bulk populations of cells resulting in averaged data sets that hide potentially critical variations due to cellular heterogeneity in tissues or even within cells that may appear functionally equivalent by available phenotypic assays. Assaying many single cells is essential to understand biological phenomena that derive from stochasticity (e.g. lineage priming in development) or the cellular heterogeneity of tissues or tumours. It has only become feasible recently for thousands of single cells to be isolated and interrogated using the comprehensive, large-scale approaches afforded by microfluidics followed by DNA and/or RNA sequencing. Through a MRC Discovery Award, we seek to catalyse the investigation of cellular function across our two Universities by combining high-throughput microfluidics with big data ‘omics. The existing genomics and cell biology expertise in the University of Edinburgh (UoE) are perfectly complemented by Heriot-Watt University’s (HW) expertise in microfluidic engineering and mechanically stressing cells. A Discovery Award would catalyse a new cross-institutional venture, the Edinburgh Cellular Genomics Consortium (eCGC). Three PDRA positions would be funded across our two Universities to establish Droplet-based single cell sequencing technologies. Subsequently, these technologies and posts would be applied in three biomedical research collaborations selected by the eCGC Steering Committee. This application is distinct from normal response funding calls: Partnership Grant applications, for example, are not permitted to request PDRAs for scientific research.