science

Mapping the Statistics of the Human B cell system

A systems-level view of B cells

By sampling B cells from multiple hard-to-study organs within the same individual, Ivana Cvijovic and I generated the first systems-level perspective of the human antibody system. Most immune-monitoring efforts focus on the peripheral blood because it is non-invasive. Our study compares as many as 5 organs per donor, which allows systematic insights into the dynamics of long-term antibody memory in Humans and informs non-invasive immune monitoring.

Key findings:

• Long-term antibody memory emerges uniformly throughout the immune response
• Proliferative antibody-secreting cells uniquely circulate among multiple tissues
• Immune-monitoring via the peripheral blood has key sampling biases and limitations

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Leveraging lineage tracing to understand cell reprogramming

This study investigates how cells integrate external signals with their intrinsic state during reprogramming, using human B cells as a model system.

This study investigates how cells integrate external signals with their intrinsic state during reprogramming, using human B cells as a model system.

Key findings:

• Intrinsic cellular states significantly influence reprogramming outcomes
• Reprogrammed cell populations show high diversity in final states
• Cells from the same lineage (clones) often adopt similar fates, indicating the importance of initial cell state

These results have important implications for cell-based therapies and tissue engineering. Intrinsic heterogeneity in the input cells should be understood and harnessed for better outcomes.

Creating the datasets to enable Molecular Medicine

As a key contributor to the Tabula Sapiens Consortium, I’ve helped create a multi-organ, single-cell transcriptomic atlas of humans. This atlas serves as a valuable resource for training foundation models of biology and understanding the molecular basis of diseases.

As a key contributor to the Tabula Sapiens Consortium, I’ve helped create a multi-organ, single-cell transcriptomic atlas of humans. This atlas serves as a valuable resource for training foundation models of biology and understanding the molecular basis of diseases.

My contributions include:

• Procuring organs
• Processing tissues into single-cell suspensions
• Preparing sequencing libraries
• Analyzing vast datasets

Research focus: Analyzing immune cells across tissues to gain new insights into this complex system’s function and regulation within the context of the broader human atlas.

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