BME Seminar Series: Siddharth Dey, UC Santa Barbara

Developing integrated single-cell epigenome and transcriptome sequencing technologies to study early mammalian development

Abstract: Regulation of transcription is coordinated by several layers of the epigenome; however, our understanding of how cell-to-cell heterogeneity in the epigenome influences gene expression variability remains limited. To address this question, our lab has recently developed four single-cell multiomics technologies that I will present in this talk. First, we developed a method to strand-specifically detect DNA methylation in single cells to uncover the mechanisms responsible for the global erasure of the methylome during preimplantation mouse/human development. Next, I will discuss a method to simultaneously quantify DNA methylation, DNA accessibility and mRNA from the same cell to understand how changes in these epigenetic features are involved in the emergence of cell types during gastrulation in organoid models of human development. Next, I will introduce a method to simultaneously quantify protein-DNA interactions and mRNA from single cells to study X chromosome inactivation. And finally, I will discuss a method to map symmetric and asymmetric cell divisions to study the dynamics of tissue development.

Bio: Siddharth Dey is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Center for Bioengineering at UC Santa Barbara. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley in 2012 working with Professor David Schaffer and Professor Adam Arkin. Thereafter, he conducted postdoctoral research in Professor Alexander van Oudenaarden's group at the Hubrecht Institute, The Netherlands before moving to UC Santa Barbara in 2017. Dey’s group develops single-cell sequencing technologies to study how variability in the epigenome regulates gene expression heterogeneity and cell fate decisions during mammalian development.