Tissue architecture of human cells in health and disease
16:00–17:00 · Stockholm time
Undergraduate, master’s and PhD students, and postdocs.
Abstract
The human body is composed of trillions of cells that organize into complex tissues and organs. Although nearly all cells share the same genetic instructions, they acquire different identities and functions. How do genes determine cellular behaviour, how do cells communicate and organize into functional tissues, and what happens when this organization is disrupted? Advances in genetics, single-cell sequencing, and spatial transcriptomics are transforming our ability to comprehensively investigate genes in millions of individual cells, mapping their precise locations and roles within human tissues. This enables understanding of how genetic variation, gene regulation, and cellular interactions shape human health and disease.
In this talk, I will introduce how systems biology has progressed from identifying genetic risk factors to reconstructing the cellular architecture of human organs. Drawing on research spanning cardiovascular disease, cancer, and inflammatory bowel diseases, I will highlight discoveries revealing how cells change their identity during inflammation, how fibroblasts organize immune responses, and how similar cellular mechanisms are shared across different organs. Finally, I will discuss how large-scale collaborative initiatives, such as the Human Cell Atlas, build comprehensive maps and predictive models of human tissues to understand cellular disease mechanisms.
