Spatial Transcriptomics

Single-cell RNA sequencing has revolutionized our approach to study human tissue. Single-cell and single-nuclear RNA sequencing allow us to quantify gene expression in individual cells to define cell types and cell states. Applying these approaches to normal and diseased tissue will allow us to understand both the changes in cell populations and in the activity of specific cell types that occur with disease. These single-cell approaches provide much more data than can be obtained from bulk RNA sequencing, but they do not allow us to place individual cells within the structure of the liver. We are now applying spatial transcriptomic approaches to map the expression of hundreds of different genes within cells across liver tissue to understand how cell localization, gene expression, and cell-cell communication changes with progression of liver disease.