Please note that our usual internal seminar series won't take place this wednesday.
Feel free to join the trailblazer lecture instead.
The Developing Human Immune System
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 11:00
BMC Small Lecture Hall (N 02.040)
Großhaderner Str. 9, 82152 Planegg-Martinsried
Host: Barbara Schraml, BMC
Co-organizers: SFB 1054 Cell Fate Decisions and PILOT (TRR 359 Perinatal Development of Immune Cell Topology)
The human immune system is extremely complex, comprised of multiple cell types and states interacting in myriad ways to produce diverse cellular ecosystems. The rise of single-cell genomics in recent years has contributed a great deal to understanding this complexity and the role of the immune system in infection, inflammation, and disease. In this lecture Muzlifah Haniffa will demonstrate the application of single-cell genomics to decode the developing human immune system. In particular, she will discuss her work using single-cell RNA sequencing to study human yolk sac, fetal liver and bone marrow haematopoiesis and the immune network formation in prenatal peripheral tissues. Muzlifah will discuss this work within her broader research goal of understanding how developmental immune programs may be co-opted in post-natal disease. A detailed understanding of the developing immune system is also relevant to improve stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine.
Muzz (as she likes to be called) describes herself as a “dermatologist by trade, born into immunology, married into developmental biology and … best friends with single-cell “Omics’…”. She and her team apply single-cell genomics technologies to understand how the immune system develops and maintains health. She heads the Cellular Genetics program at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Hinxton, where she is a senior group leader, and is Professor of Dermatology and Immunology at Newcastle University. In addition, she is the Biological Network Co-Coordinator for the Human Cell Atlas https://www.humancellatlas.org/ , a global, grass-roots led research consortium aiming to map all cell types in the healthy body across all stages of development. An enthusiastic and committed international collaborator, she is an associate in the new (2024) TRR 359 PILOT.