Imaging-based approaches to single-cell transcriptomics are emerging as powerful complements to single-cell RNA-sequencing methods, in part, because these techniques preserve the native spatial context of RNAs within cells and tissues. I will describe multiplexed error robust fluorescence in situ hybridization (MERFISH)—a technique capable of imaging thousands of different RNAs simultaneously in fixed cells. This technique promises the ability to discover, identify, and map cell types in a wide variety of tissues and diseases states, and I will describe one recent application of this technique: its use to create a molecularly defined, functionally annotated cellular map of a portion of the mouse hypothalamus
Dr Jeff Moffitt is an Assistant Professor in the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital and the Department of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School. Jeff received his PhD in Physics from the University of California Berkeley where he studied molecular motors with Dr. Carlos Bustamante. He received postdoctoral training with Dr. Xiaowei Zhuang at Harvard University, where he co-developed a spatial transcriptomics technique known as MERFISH. Dr. Moffitt is a Pew Biomedical scholar.
