{"id":139943,"date":"2022-05-29T00:03:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T05:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/new-method-melds-data-to-make-a-3d-map-of-cells-activities"},"modified":"2022-05-29T00:03:16","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T05:03:16","slug":"new-method-melds-data-to-make-a-3d-map-of-cells-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/new-method-melds-data-to-make-a-3d-map-of-cells-activities","title":{"rendered":"New method melds data to make a 3D map of cells\u2019 activities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-method-melds-data-to-make-a-3d-map-of-cells-activities.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just as it\u2019s hard to understand a conversation without knowing its context, it can be difficult for biologists to grasp the significance of gene expression without knowing a cell\u2019s environment. To solve that problem, researchers at Princeton Engineering have developed a method to elucidate a cell\u2019s surroundings so that biologists can make more meaning of gene expression information.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers, led by Professor of Computer Science Ben Raphael, hope the new system will open the door to identifying rare cell types and choosing cancer treatment options with new precision. Raphael is the senior author of a paper describing the method published May 16 in Nature Methods.<\/p>\n<p>The basic technique of linking <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/gene+expression\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">gene expression<\/a> with a cell\u2019s environment, called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aaf2403\">spatial transcriptomics<\/a> (ST), has been around for several years. Scientists break down <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/tissue+samples\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">tissue samples<\/a> onto a microscale grid and link each spot on the grid with information about gene expression. The problem is that current computational tools can only analyze spatial patterns of gene expression in two dimensions. Experiments that use multiple slices from a single tissue sample\u2014such as a region of a brain, heart or tumor\u2014are difficult to synthesize into a complete picture of the cell types in the tissue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just as it\u2019s hard to understand a conversation without knowing its context, it can be difficult for biologists to grasp the significance of gene expression without knowing a cell\u2019s environment. To solve that problem, researchers at Princeton Engineering have developed a method to elucidate a cell\u2019s surroundings so that biologists can make more meaning of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,38,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-engineering","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}