Gene-to-gene transcriptional coordination breakdown among single cells during aging

Next BIU Engineering Colloquium,
Dr. Orr Levy, Thursday, 12.03.24 @14:00
BIU Engineering  Building 1103,  Room 329

We are delighted to host

Dr. Orr Levy

Yale University, New Haven, USA

Dr. Levy will give a talk on the subject:

Gene-to-gene transcriptional coordination breakdown 

among single cells during aging

Abstract:
A long-standing paradigm holds that stochastic aberrations of transcriptional regulation play a key role in the process of aging. While transcriptional dysregulation is observed in the majority of cell types in the form of increased cell-to-cell variability, its generality to all cell types remains doubted. Here, we propose a novel approach for analyzing transcriptional regulation in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data by focusing on the global coordination between the genes rather than the variability of individual genes or correlations between pairs of genes. Consistently, across very different organisms and cell types, we find a decrease in the gene-to-gene transcriptional coordination in aging cells. In addition, we find that loss of gene-to-gene transcriptional coordination is associated with high mutational load of a specific, age-related signature and with radiation-induced DNA damage. These observations suggest a general, potentially universal, stochastic attribute of transcriptional dysregulation in aging.

Short Bio: 

I am a Postdoctoral associate in the lab of Prof. Ruslan Medzhitov in Yale university. My Postdoc study is in the field of complex networks focusing on problems from biology and physiology. Having prior research experience both in Bar-Ilan university under to supervision of Prof. Shlomo Havlin, and prior research and management experience in the Israeli High-tech industry as a head of C4I branch, in charge of data mining and data engineering and systems architecture.