Congratulations to CELL students Jeremy Lotto (Hoodless lab) and Wilder Scott(Underhill lab) for winning prizes at the Cascade RegMed Symposium in Victoria in October.
Congratulations to CELL student Samantha Yoon (Lynn lab) for receiving poster presentation award at Vancouver Diabetes Research Day 2019.
Poster Title: Single cell RNA-seq of human islets reveals heterogeneity in beta cell transcriptional states and calcium response
In the lab of Dr. Francis Lynn at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute, Ji Soo (Samantha) is interested in identifying calcium-dependent gene expression in human pancreatic endocrine cells (islets), which regulate blood glucose levels. In order to address the heterogeneous cell types and responses to stimuli present in islets, she performed single cell RNA-sequencing on islets that were exposed to different stimuli to activate or inhibit endogenous calcium signalling pathways. She found that at the transcriptional level, different populations of insulin-producing beta cells expressed different levels and numbers of calcium-regulated genes, and she identified several novel calcium-regulated genes in these populations. Overall, Ji Soo aims to use the results of this project to identify important transcriptional changes that may contribute to underlying functional heterogeneity in human islet cell populations responding to external stimuli.