Ep. 209: “Cell Science at the Allen Institute” Featuring Drs. Ru Gunawardane & Kaytlyn Gerbin

Guest:

Dr. Ru Gunawardane is the Executive Director at the Allen Institute for Cell Science. She leads a group of researchers creating a collection of high-quality gene edited stem cell lines to study cell organization and activities through live cell imaging. Dr. Katylyn Gerbin is a Scientist at the Allen Institute, whose work focuses on implementing cardiac differentiation methods and developing the cardiomyocyte pipeline using gene-edited hiPSCs. They discuss the Institute’s mission to understand the fundamentals of how cells work, how they generate their gene-edited stem cell lines, and their recent work tracking cell states in hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes.

Dr. Gunawardane recently published a Nature Cell Biology article on the importance of disease models that reflect diverse ancestral backgrounds and sex.

Featured Products and Resources:

• Try the New Standard in hPSC Maintenance: mTeSR™ Plus Medium
• Survey Report: Hurdles of Genome Editing Using CRISPR-Cas9

The Stem Cell Science Round Up

SARS-CoV-2 Induces Fibrosis in Kidney Cells and Organoids – SARS-CoV-2 can directly infect kidney cells, inducing cell injury with subsequent fibrosis.

Fluctuating Methylation Clocks for Cell Lineage Tracing – Researchers used fluctuating DNA methylation sites to track the ancestry and dynamics of a cell population.

Forebrain Assembloid Models of Timothy Syndrome – Scientists used forebrain assembloids to study interneuron migration in Timothy syndrome.

Lineage Tracing in Cerebral Organoid Development – Researchers used iTracer, a lineage recorder, to explore clonality and lineage dynamics during cerebral organoid development.

Photo Reference: Courtesy of Drs. Ru Gunawardane & Kaytlyn Gerbin