How to quantify developmental variability across
spatio-temporal scales?
Embryos develop following a predefined set of rules, in a reproducible manner to allow the organisation of a functioning organism.
In the group, we are interested in developing Computer Science methods to quantitatively characterise and understand this developmental reproducibility across spatial and temporal scales.
We are pursuing two main research axes:
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Building average representatives of a population of developing embryos
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Characterising developmental variability across spatio-temporal scales
An atlas framework
In order to quantify developmental reproducibility, it is necessary to be able to compare different individuals within a population. We are developing algorithms that allow to co-register multiple embryos in a fully non-linear fashion enabling the construction of a synthetic average of embryogenesis.
We are building morphological atlases from 3D movies of developing embryos acquired using light microscopy. We are also building molecular atlases from 3D near single cell acquisition acquired with latest spatial transcriptomics methods.
Quantifying developmental reproducibility
Developmental reproducibility is achieved at multiple scales depending on the tissue or the organism observed.
Therefore, quantifying this reproducibility has to be done across spatial scales, from the single cell to the whole embryo scale. We develop machine-learning based algorithms to automatically detect the different scales of reproducibility within a population of embryos throughout their development.