Cell 3D Positioning by Optical Encoding (C3PO) and its application to spatial transcriptomics

Please join us for the Virtual Pub on Friday, March 14 at 13:00 CET. We welcome Jim Swoger, EMBL Barcelona , for a talk entitled, "Cell 3D Positioning by Optical Encoding (C3PO) and its application to spatial transcriptomics"

This event is followed by the Tech Exchange with the Euro-BioImaging Industry Board.

All are welcome to join!

(Photo in poster by EMBL/PhotoLab)

Summary:  Most current state-of-the-art spatial -omics techniques require physically sectioning the biological tissue of interest, and are therefore intrinsically 2D methods.  However, for many studies in contemorary biology, 3D context is key.  I will present our recent efforts in developing Cell 3D Positioning by Optical encoding (C3PO), in which we use a light-sheet microscope to optically write 3D fluorescent gradients into an intact sample.  The sample can then be dissociated into individual cells on which transcriptomics, for example, can be performed.  By dissociating a tissue into its component cells we lose track of their original spatial positions.  However, because we have written the 3D fluorescence gradients into the cells before dissociation, after dissociation these fluorescent levels can be read by a FACS machine and used to map each individual cell back into the 3D space of the sample.  Transcriptomics can then be done on these cells, whose original 3D positions in the sample are known.