Single-Cell RNA-Seq and cell heterogeneity in the central nervous system

Recent advances in single-cell RNA sequencing are producing exciting new insights into cell diversity within different tissues and cancers.

Join Dr Gonçalo Castelo-Branco and Dr Amit Zeisel, of the the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Karolinska Institutet, as they discuss these new developments including an investigation of cell diversity within the central nervous system (CNS).   

Webinar topics:

  • Technology development, applications, and challenges
  • Investigation of cell diversity in the central nervous system
  • Insights into oligodendrocyte heterogeneity

About the presenters:


Dr Gonçalo Castelo-Branco

Dr Gonçalo Castelo-Branco is a Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor) at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Gonçalo received is PhD in Medical Biochemistry in 2005, with Prof. Ernest Arenas of the Karolinska Institutet, on development of dopaminergic neurons and neural stem differentiation. He completed post-doctoral fellowships first with Assoc. Professor Ola Hermanson (Karolinska Institutet) and then with Prof. Tony Kouzarides (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom), working in neural stem cells and pluripotent stem cells, and chromatin.

Gonçalo started his lab in 2012, focusing on the molecular mechanisms defining the epigenetic state of cells of the oligodendrocyte lineage. His research group is particularly focused on how interplay between transcription factors, non-coding RNAs and chromatin modifying enzymes contributes to the transition between epigenetic states in oligodendrocyte precursor cells- with the aim to design epigenetic based-therapies to induce regeneration (remyelination) in demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis.


Dr Amit Zeisel

Dr Amit Zeisel is postdoc fellow in the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. Amit received is PhD in systems biology from Weizmann Instititue of Science under the supervision of Prof. Eytan Domany.

For the last three years, he has been a postdoc in the lab of Sten Linnarsson, were he developed protocols and computational tools for the analysis of single-cell RNA-seq.