Seminar: Inferring Cell Lineage Trees and Differentiation Maps from Lineage Tracing Data
Palash Sashittal
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Virginia Tech
Friday, September 12
2:30 - 3:45 PM
Classroom Building, Room 260
Abstract
Reconstructing the cell lineage tree and differentiation map of cellular populations is essential not only for understanding normal development but also for studying complex diseases such as cancer. In tumors, lineage relationships and dysregulated cell-type transitions drive critical processes including clonal evolution, treatment resistance, and cancer cell plasticity. Recent advances in lineage tracing technologies have enabled simultaneous measurement of heritable barcodes and transcriptional states at single-cell resolution. However, these technologies do not capture every cell division or differentiation event, creating a need for computational methods to reconstruct the developmental and evolutionary history of cells from the lineage tracing data. In this talk, I will present two methods, Startle and Carta, to infer cell lineage trees and differentiation maps from single-cell lineage tracing data, respectively. I will demonstrate the application of these tools to developmental systems and discuss their potential to study tumor evolution and differentiation in cancer.
Biography
Dr. Palash Sashittal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Prof. Ben Raphael in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University. He received a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and B.Tech. in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay). His research focuses on the design of combinatorial and statistical algorithms to analyze and interpret sequencing data. Recent areas of emphasis include infectious disease evolution and transmission, cancer genome evolution, and cell fate mapping of developmental systems.