Meet-the-Expert: Creating a Multimodal Brain Cell Type Atlas With Hongkui Zeng, PhD

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To understand the function of the brain and how its dysfunction leads to brain diseases, it is essential to have a deep understanding of the cell type composition of the brain, how the cell types are connected with each other, and what their roles are in circuit function.

Join this interactive Meet-the-Expert session to hear Hongkui Zeng discuss her research team’s experience in building multiple platforms and generating large-scale datasets to characterize the transcriptomic, physiological, morphological, and connectional properties of different types of neurons in a standardized manner, toward a multimodal taxonomy of cell types and a description of their wiring diagram for the mouse brain, with a primary focus on the cortex.

These data contribute significantly to the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network’s efforts and collectively provide an integrated resource to the neuroscience community to facilitate the investigation of the cellular diversity, circuit composition, and circuit function.

After the talk, Sheena Josselyn will moderate a 30-minute conversation in which you’ll have an opportunity to pose questions through a Q&A box.

After this virtual session, participants at all career stages will be able to:

• Achieve a better understanding of the different approaches of single cell characterization.
• Describe the number and basic properties of cell types in the mouse cortex.
• Know where and how to find the cell type resources

Speakers

Hongkui Zeng, PhD

Hongkui Zeng is the executive director of the structured science division at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which is working to develop and operate high-throughput pipelines to generate large-scale, public datasets and tools to fuel neuroscience discovery. There, she has also led several research programs or projects, including the Transgenic Technology program, Human Cortex Gene Survey project, Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas project, and Mouse Cell Types and Connectivity program. Previously, she worked at a biotechnology start-up where she studied the genomic repertoire of the G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) gene family, and the function of many GPCR genes in behavioral models of CNS diseases. Zeng earned a PhD in molecular and cell biology from Brandeis University and completed postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sheena Josselyn, PhD

Sheena Josselyn is a senior scientist in the neurosciences and mental health program at The Hospital for Sick Children and professor in psychology and physiology at the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Toronto. Sheena’s current research focus studies how information is encoded stored and used in the brain, primarily using mouse models. She received her Bachelor’s Degree at Queen’s University at Kingston and her PhD at the University of Toronto which are both located in Canada. Her previous position being a Research Associate in the Department of Neurobiology at UCLA and prior to that she worked in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine.